A Chuckle In My Ear

I swallowed. "I swore to God," I admitted at last, "that if He healed me, I would be chaste."

She exploded in laughter, and even Gytha snorted. I felt my face go scarlet. "Why, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"

"I had sinned, Lady Adeliza," I pointed out, feeling lofty, "as you well know."

"My cunt is what sent you on Crusade, yes," she giggled, "but all that got absolved! The Pope himself promised you God's forgiveness. So don't blame me, soldier." She arched an eyebrow. "Besides," she pointed out a bit more quietly, "I'd say you got swindled."

"What's that?" I looked sharply at her. We were passing Colchester to the east, over the fields. The sun was a fist's height above the land to our left, the sea there glittering on the edge of awareness, a mere hint of light at Harwich. "What are you saying?"

She shrugged, as though this was all the same to her. "I mean, I'm hardly a priest," she began, the lilt of her laughter once again threatening on the edge of my hearing, "but one would think that, in return for a vow as important as you not using your... well. Your endowment?" The laughter burst forth at that, and I looked down. "Your organ? Your member?" She winked in a manner that could only be described as salacious, as Gytha glared stolidly ahead. "Your big, hard prick? I mean, one would think that a loving God would have actually healed you."

"I'm alive, Alice," I pointed out quietly.

"Yes, but hardly healed." She sniffed. "Seems to me a bit of healthy exercise might lift your spirits? Give you some energy?"

"You're married, Alice."

"Well. But let's be honest, Robert," she sighed, "my prospects are suddenly in doubt. Is it a marriage, when your husband has killed a king and disappeared? When you're riding to beg for mercy from the next king?" She laughed again, a harsh and choppy sound this time. "It's not like we had much of a marriage at all, really. Not the sort of loving companionship that the Bishop awards a bacon-flitch for, so to speak." I nodded. Everyone knew about the custom of the bacon-flitch. "You well know, Robert, just how weak are my feelings for Walter."

"Still." I sniffed, looking pointedly at the fields ahead. "I made a promise."

"I did too, on my wedding day. I broke mine."

"Indeed. And where are you now?"

"On a horse, in a lovely summer morning." She reached out and patted my back. "Could be much, much worse. I might even be free of my husband, if Henry has found him."

"I told you, they were hardly looking." I spat off to the side to ward off Satan. "You'll be fine. He probably won't even take your land, as long as Walter's alive. And I have some ideas on that score, too, if he'll listen to me. Either way, you'll find out in a couple of days." The horses plodded on down the long slope toward the little town with its brown-grey water fretting past Mersea Isle on the right. "Let's just get there," I sighed.

"And then back?" She giggled again. "You've left your horses at my house."

I blinked. "Fuck."

Her giggle rose to a laugh. "Maybe later, Robert of Eyensbury!" she cackled, nudging her horse ahead of mine.

* * *

The sea was a great, shining flat of mud the same color as the land under our hooves when we reached the shore, Alice sitting high and haughty on her palfrey. The harbor teemed with gulls, pecking among brightly painted boats now high and dry. She peered at a passing woman, who peered right back from beneath a great basket of washing perched on her head. "Pardon?" Alice called. "I know there are some here who owe allegiance to Sir Walter Tirel, baron of Langham. Do you know any?"

The woman frowned up at us, all three in turn, looking with some loathing at Gytha. "My husband. Who's asking?"

"I am Lady Adeliza Tirel," Alice smiled, "and I'm looking to hire your husband."

The woman grunted. "Hire? Like for fuckin'? Careful. He'll wear you out."

"No. Just to take us around to London." Alice showed no shock at the woman's mouth, which seemed to disappoint her as she stood there with her laundry.

"Oh, just around to London, hmm?" She arched an eyebrow. "And back? That's some four days, maybe five. And his boat's got no room for horses."

"We're not bringing the animals," Alice nodded, still smiling. "Can his boat take three of us?"

"Sure," grinned the woman, her eyes already glittering with avarice. "Food and drink too?"

"Presumably." Alice sounded like she was getting a bit tired of this already, but she had little choice but to deal with the woman... whose eyes went back and forth between our horses, my sword, her jewelry, and the other myriad little details that might tell her how much she could squeeze out of us.

"That's five days' fishing, lost," she pointed out, sounding almost regretful, "plus wear and tear. Ale. Compensation for the dangers of the seas..."

"Name a price," Alice grated, "and then perhaps we can go from there?"

The woman nodded, her mind doing the sums. "Shilling a day, per head," she finally pronounced, "plus you should leave another ten pounds with me. Against the boat, in case she sinks."

"I plainly do not have ten spare pounds," Alice snapped, and I could hear that she was taking pains not to snicker, "but you know my husband. You know he has it. I shall sign his pledge for the value of your boat."

"And fuck your shilling a head," Gytha piped up from behind us. "Five pence. No more."

"Ten," the woman snapped, "and I won't have my husband bugger all three of you in the ass." She winked. "Don't think I'm joking. He's always ready to fuck."

"We shall settle at eight pence per head, per day," Alice said in that loud, flat, wealthy voice ladies like her had, "and we'll pay half in advance. Sound good?"

"No," the woman groused, "a shilling a head sounds good. But as your ladyship pleases, I suppose." She started toward a wattle cottage up the path, smiling; I could tell she thought she'd gotten by far the better of the deal, and perhaps she was right. If we came back in five days' time, Lady Adeliza would be over six pounds the poorer!

The woman showed no interest in us until Alice cleared her throat again. "When can we leave?"

"With the tide," she sang, without turning around. "Come wait at my house, if you like." We looked at each other, a bit shocked. But, after all, where else was there to go?

We let our horses carry us slowly up the path behind the sour woman.

* * *

I'm not sure quite when Alice stole into the little barn into which Gytha and I had been thrown as soon as we arrived; clearly, we "servants" were not to be granted the hospitality of the actual house as we waited for the tide. I sat against the wall beside some chickens as I did my patient exercises on my half-crippled arm, daydreaming about my land.

Where, at the very least, I would not have to be stuck in peoples' barns anymore.

But it was dark in there, and dusty, noisy with Gytha's snores, clucky with the hens and stinking of the one goat the family kept, as I became slowly aware of careful feet on the straw behind me. Gytha slept on. I turned, my eyes steering past the sun-slanted beams of dust, to see Alice already halfway across toward us. Her lively eyes found her sleeping maid and her brows rose high. "Come sit with me?" she whispered over by the door.

My brain replied at once: NO! But I was more than just my brain as I crawled slowly and quietly through the low barn toward her. "You grew tired of being inside?"

"That fishwife is a bitch," she shrugged, "and her husband is already getting the boat ready." She pulled off her bag of pennies, laying it aside with a chink; it was much lighter than it had been that morning. "I thought I'd find better friendship in here."

"Well, perhaps not the kind you found with me five years ago." I have no idea why I said that; probably, I was still dwelling on the oath I'd sworn to God. And how Alice had mocked it. We both glanced over toward Gytha, still sound asleep in her corner. "You nervous? About Henry?"

"What can I do?" She yawned and arranged herself on the straw. "He'll have your letter by tomorrow. When I arrive, he'll already have decided what he's going to do. And you'll have done your part by him." She looked over at me, her body curled and her eyes flashing. "Naturally, I'll let him know that you were nothing but a gentleman."

I scowled, remembering Gilbert's words when they'd sent me here. "You didn't take much convincing to come to London with me."

"He sent the right man," she murmured at once, her voice dead serious. "Of course I'd go with you." She smiled lazily. "Did I ever tell you that riding turns me on?"

I went still. "No." I meant it to be crisp, forceful, a conversational gate now slammed shut. But that's difficult to pull off in whispers.

"I think a lot of women are like that," she reflected, her hand scratching idly at her knee. "The motion of the horse, the feel of the saddle on our vaginas..." She smiled, scratching higher, her dress rising with her fingernails. "Does it happen with men?" she wondered.

I looked at her for a long moment, my eyes straining not to fall to her leg. "The saddle does not feel special on our vaginas, no," I replied shortly.

Her laugh was low, throaty, very quiet. We both looked over at Gytha. Alice's hand continued to creep up, and I was suddenly very aware of the silence in the barn, the laziness of a late English morning, the breathing of two people. And always, as she bit her lower lip and pulled her dress the rest of the way up, the mocking giggle of God in my ear.

I sat motionless as her thigh came into view, my mouth falling open when I caught the sun glinting off the coarse hair over her cunt, showing me goosepimples there. "Yes, Robert," she went on, her voice very husky now, "riding really does turn me on." Her eyes commanded mine, holding them with her usual air of potent, exhilarating challenge before both of us looked down at where her fingers already stroked roughly along the sides of her swollen pink slit.

"I..." My lungs strove for air. "I can't..."

"I'm not asking you to," she soothed, her voice silky, "but you may watch, if you like." It wasn't like her invitation was necessary, strictly speaking, since watching was what I was already doing, eyes rapt on where her fingers ran up and down the outsides of her lips, mind afire with the memories of my own fingers there... my tongue... my penis... "Yes," she sighed then, her eyelids fluttering as, at last, she allowed herself to plunge a long, slow finger deep within her body.

My ears rang with a scream from my brain, and it seemed to me that I was paralyzed: I could no more move than I could look away, rooted to the straw, bound there by Alice's busy hand, now with the other fingers holding her lips wide. I saw everything, the glimmer of her juices running over her reddened flesh and then disappearing into the dark shadow beneath, where the crack of her ass drank them greedily. I cleared my throat and made myself speak. "You'll ruin your dress."

"Fuck," she rasped, hiking her clothes impatiently up under her hunched hips before planting her bare ass back onto the prickly straw. "Thanks," she hummed, her face and neck scarlet. Her fingers were already back up in her, working rhythmically.

I remembered exactly what her nipples would look like right now: they'd always come to life, firm, sticking out whenever she grew wet. I'd known those nipples many times, over many nights, sucking on them as I rutted with her... My cock was a pained bar, prodding the front of my trousers, and I reached into my waistband to haul it off my leg without a thought.

Her eyes glittered when she saw my hand inside my pants, her own fingers stirring through the soup she'd made of her vagina, hips moving in little circles over the straw. I held onto my cock for a moment, feeling its firmness, the way it filled my hand as it had filled her cunt, but God was still laughing at me so I pulled my hand slowly out. She nodded, her lips twisted in a wild smirk, hand moving roughly against herself now.

She'd never taken long to get off.

A loud gasp pushed her over the edge, her mouth opening in a scream that she somehow kept silent. When my eyes dropped again to her crotch I saw her legs spread wide, heels digging at the straw, three fingers thrust far up inside her as she panted through that open mouth of hers, her whole body shuddering as I watched.

Only after she opened her other hand did I realize it had been sweating into a handful of straw, now limp and bent as she dropped it onto the floor, her face melting into that catlike look of complete satisfaction I remembered. She relaxed slowly, her eyes lidding as they found mine again. "Feel free to pull it out and yank it, Robert." Her voice had that edge of mockery it always had, but she was serious. "I won't tell the priests."

"Fuck." I ran a trembling hand through my hair, my gaze dragging itself off her body only with the harshest difficulty. "You weren't kidding when you talked about that saddle."

"Oh, it wasn't just the saddle," she whispered airily, her own eyes greedy on the front of my trousers. "Really. Pull it out. I want to see it." In a trance, without even another glance at the forgotten, snoring Gytha, I scrambled to my knees and began to undo my pants. She grinned wider with each knot, until she gave a quiet little squeal when my cock sprang forth into view, popping out hard and eager into the sunlight that filtered through the slats. "Ohh," she moaned, licking her lips. "I'd forgotten."

For an instant I knelt there, two feet away from a willing, wet vagina, spread wide for the aching cock in my hand, both of us staring hard into each others' flushed faces before, with my last shred of sanity, I remembered my balky arm and the work it had taken me to get to the point where God had at least let me use it. A little. A bit more every day, in fact, the muscles training themselves to knit back together, and if I gave in now... if I leaned forward, fell between her thighs, and slid right into her... if I even once felt the hot, eager embrace of her cunt around my flesh, I endangered all of that.

I cursed.

Alice's eyes went wide when I lurched to my feet, tucking myself back into my trousers as I stalked toward the barn door.

* * *

Predictably, the fishwife's husband's burly arms remained a bit too long around Alice's waist as he lifted her out of the little coracle and into his stout fishing boat, looking low and sleek as the tide raised it from the sucking mud. Gytha, pressed against my side in the tiny craft as the fishwife held us against the side of the boat, leaned over and whispered in my ear. "You should have done it."

I shrank back. "Done what?"

She shrugged. "When m'Lady needs cock, m'Lady needs cock. You know that well, soldier." She spat over the side. "Should have given it to her good."

I waited as Alice's feet disappeared over the side above me. "I didn't know you were awake," I frumped.

"I was asleep," she muttered, rolling her eyes, "not dead. I know what it means when the straw gets wet."

"Fuck," I grunted softly to myself as the fisherman leaned over, staring at Gytha's chest as he stretched out his arm. All around us the still, stinking waters where the Blackwater met the sea shone like a dirty mirror. In every direction, men and women bustled: the fish weirs swarmed with people, the salt pans glimmered in the late-morning sun, the baskets of muddy oysters rose dripping from the shallows. With a squawk, the fisherman dragged the maid up the side and over with what sounded like a painful thump.

"No coordination, that one," the fishwife observed, shaking her head. "Foul Saxon bitch."

I swallowed, not too sure of my own arms as I tossed my bundle up onto the boat and planted my foot in the wildly swaying coracle. I'd never been all that good at boats, though at least this was better than my last journey: still sick, my arm leaking pus at the end of a long, fevered trip across all Christendom, to be hauled up on a stretcher at Le Havre.

I shuddered, took a deep breath, and pulled hard with my right arm. And at last, as if in benediction for my angry stalk out of the barn an hour before, God blessed me with a fair tide and a fortuitous little bounce of the water, which lifted the coracle even as I made to swing my leg across to the deck of the fisherman's boat. I found myself stumbling aboard, reaching blindly for the mast, scanning wildly fore and aft and finding the same kind of boat I'd ridden a dozen times before, across to Normandy, or over the Bosporus: double-ended and one-masted, an ancient Norse design the people of eastern England had been seeing for fifteen generations or more.

The fisherman nodded at me, eyeing the sword I'd thrown onto his deck with my bundle. "We going to have trouble, warrior?" He spoke with the accent of Brittany.

"We won't." I nodded back, watching him as I slung the sword around my waist. "Robert of Eyensbury."

"Robert. That's a Norman name for a Saxon-looking man." He squinted at my face. "Well. Whatever. I'm Gerald. We'll be sailing together for a few days, so pays to be comfortable." He nodded toward a mountain of rope and netting scattered along the bow of the boat. "Hope you brought blankets. My wife told me to ship food for you, but not bedding."

"Oh." I glanced at my bundle, then at what Gytha had brought for the two of them. "Sure." I had no idea what the women had brought, but it was August. So not a problem. "Do we sail through the night?"

He shrugged. "On a full moon, if I'm in a hurry and not sleepy, I've done it sometimes."

I glanced uncertainly at the water. "Even with the sea-monsters?"

"For every sea-monster, soldier, there's a mermaid." He winked, studying the women in the bow. "Once I get into the River I'll be happier in daylight, but we'll see how I feel once the sun goes down." He eyed the rising water alongside. "Almost deep enough. Wind's fine today. Should be nothing but boredom and sunshine. Usually, if I do need to stop when I go to London town, I pull ashore near Canvey, just at the start of the River. I usually stop there anyway to buy some cheese; you sell it in London for a profit." He shrugged. "If we do stop tonight, I don't think we'll get so far; this is a late start for this trip. Though, with this wind?" He spat over the side. "You never know."

I nodded, the gloom descending like fall leaves. I'd traveled the foreshore in the mouth of the River before, and I knew of little there but marsh and mud. "Great. Like, down near the Crouch?"

"Indeed," he grunted. "Midges and swamps, but it's better than running aground in the dark because I can't stay awake. Eh?" He winked, nudging me as he nodded toward the women. "Unless Lady Tirel knows how to handle a boat, no?"

We wasted a few moments staring at the women, both engaged in hollowing out a nest for themselves among the nets. "I doubt it."

"Me too." He nodded appreciatively. "That maid of hers can certainly help me with the tiller, if she needs to. Know what I'm saying?" he nudged. I gave a suitably manly laugh, conscious that this man's wife was still within sight, pulling back to their children ashore. "Yeah," he mused, still staring, "can't say I'd mind putting my prick in either of them. Ever had 'em?"

I felt a small wave of lust rattle through me, and surprised myself that it included Gytha. A little bit. "Just one of them," I admitted. He'd find out, anyway. He'd be in the River when we passed ashore to talk to Henry, and there was no doubt he'd hear about Alice and I. Everyone there would know. "The richer one."

"Good." He clapped me on the shoulder. The left one, alas. "I'll take the other, if you don't mind. She's got good tits, for a Saxon."

"She's kind of a bitch," I observed mildly.

"You met my wife." He smiled. "I like 'em feisty. Just wait. I'll sweet-talk her soon enough. Bet you five pence?"