A Chuckle In My Ear

I chuckled. "Lady Adeliza's got the money, friend. I'm as poor as you are."

"That's what they all say." Cackling, he moved off toward the rail, reached for a rope, and did a few complicated nautical things as the breeze stirred the sail, filled it, and then sent us moving imperceptibly through the mucky waters. I knew enough to brace myself, thinking there was no way for people as clueless as us to judge when the boat would heel seaward, but the women were not quite ready when Gerald laid the tiller over and beamed as they tumbled. "Stay down!" he called to them, not before checking over his shoulder to make sure his wife was out of earshot. "I'll have you on your back soon enough anyway."

He looked at me, clearly expecting more manly laughter, but I was already vomiting over the side.

I'd been on many boats before. And I'd never failed to be sick.

* * *

The world slid by as the sun moved over us, far too slowly to bother looking at: the boat made its slow, unstoppable way across the mouth of the Blackwater, past the ancient gaunt chapel up on its grassy hill, along the waterlogged coast above the Crouch. I pondered the miles slipping by beneath me, so much more comfortably than on a horse; it almost seemed like cheating, traveling this way. I thought about Alice's money sack, now much thinner than when we'd ridden out that morning, and the ease it represented.

The ease of having money.

Ease that could be mine, I was starting to think, my mind moving in strange and vaguely threatening directions. For someone would need to collect the revenues from Walter Tirel's land, and I thought there was a good chance it would not be his wife. Maybe, just maybe, it could be the man, newly-knighted, who'd brought her to London to answer for her husband's crime?

Maybe?

These thoughts chased themselves through my brain as I stared up at the creaking yard, its sail pulling us along with nothing but the slightest effort by Gerald. Alice lay sound asleep in the netting, and I was not surprised to find that Gytha had accepted the fisherman's invitation to sit in the back of the boat and chat.

I was glad I'd not taken his bet. He was not a bad-looking fellow.

I carved out a spot for myself beside Alice and I slept then, in the heat of the day, the wind stirring my hair with the drumbeat of the waves slapping the hull as we

journeyed on into the push of the River Crouch, grey water passing from grey lands toward a silver horizon to the east...

My eyes pulled themselves open into a sun that, blessedly, had moved across the sky a bit, chasing a clump of clouds heading toward London. I'd been awoken, in fact, by that very sun, striking my face as the shadow of Alice crossed my eyes. "Muh," I grunted, my mouth tasting like ashes. I heard low voices from the back of the boat, and an odd sound that I eventually realized was Gytha, laughing.

"Sleep, Robert," Alice smiled, and that was when I realized it was not the wind that stirred my hair. I smiled back at her as she leaned on her elbow, realizing she was right: there was no reason whatsoever to be awake, and so I let my eyelids fall once more and went back to my rest, still with a smile on my face.

Easy travel, for sure.

The sun had passed far overhead when I felt myself rising once more, the same land off to the right, the same sea everywhere else, the same dome of silver summer sky... I felt a finger across my lips even as I opened them. "Hush," Alice hissed, barely audible. She lay down beside me, the smell of her hair all around me, her eyes open and staring aft. Her smirk swept me up and carried me along with her mischievous gaze toward the back, under the sail, by the tiller.

Where Gerald was efficiently fucking Gytha against the side of his boat.

He had her bent over the water, bleating quiet moans in time with the slap of his thighs as they hit hers. Her dress he'd thrown up across her back, letting her plant her legs firmly enough to thrust back a bit as he drove into her, hands on her bare ass, eyes blissfully closed. I sighed. "I'd have lost five pence," I yawned.

"What?" I was somehow unsurprised to find her hand on my cock, and I didn't bother moving it. She decided to keep watching Gerald even as she turned her face my way. "What's that?"

"The fisherman wanted to bet me he could rut her." I shifted my weight, still half-asleep among the ropes, my cock already hard. "I said no."

"Wise man." Her wandering fingers hesitated outside my trousers, then slipped deftly inside my waistband. "Don't mind me."

"Alice..." I warned, but my voice had no force to it as her hand closed in triumph around my warm penis. I yawned again. "I'm trying to sleep."

"Liar." We watched as Gerald took her, his rhythm changeless as the sea he knew so well, the look on his face showing sheer joy. "He seems happy."

"Her too." It was hard to see Gytha's face over the side of the ship, but it was obvious she was into it, driving back against him, her knuckles white on the rail. "One hopes the wind doesn't shift while he's distracted."

"Exactly." Her whisper had laughter in it. "And he was so worried about sailing at night. Like he's paying any attention to the sail right now." Her thumb, remembering me, had found the sensitive spot just under my head, and I groaned as she pressed it. "Quiet," she scolded.

"You're going to make that difficult." I shifted again, so that I could give her space. God still laughed at me, as ever, but I was having a hard time focusing on that. "How long has he been at it?"

"They woke me up when she squeaked. I think it was when he reached under her skirts." Her lips found my ear, nibbling at the lobe. "They started this a few minutes later, so... yeah. Not all that long." She traced my length. "Unlike some things." She kissed me as I began to move my hips just a little, enjoying her power over me. "Will God be angry if I jerk you off?"

"Probably." I squirmed. "I've... I've very seldom done this to myself. Since then."

Her eyes finally left the couple in the back of the boat, staring at me. "You've not gotten off since you were wounded?" Her eyes moved around as she counted in her head. "That's years!"

"Oh, I've gotten off. But very rarely. And I pay an indulgence every time." I looked away, but I had already surrendered and she well knew it. My hand itched to touch her, and I was still debating that as she returned to the top of my shaft. "The way of the cross is difficult, Lady Adeliza," I grumbled.

"Yes," she giggled, "It does seem very hard." Her hand was eager under my clothes. "So this will be quick, I suppose."

I glanced at her face, so close to my own, remembering her smell. "I could let it go right now," I admitted, my mouth dry.

"But Gytha just washed your clothes." Her voice was a raspy purr in my ear, her breath warm on my face. "Should we really let them get all stained?" But I was already arching my hips by that time, my breath coming in ragged sighs, and she knew well what that meant. Years ago, she had learned my body. "I think we should."

"Ughh." I closed my eyes, the buzz in my head intensifying as her hand pulled expertly at me, and then everything went blank when she pressed one last time beneath my head and the pleasure engulfed me like the netting in which I lay, my mind sinking deep into what she was doing to me. My cock pulsed steady, hot streams of thick seed pumping into my trousers, into her hand, up across my belly. "My God," I sighed, shuddering with the force of it.

"Not your God," she snapped, her hand fierce as she slid it up and down my slicked cock. "Your woman."

My hand found her ass without a thought, without a wish, without a prayer, and then her lips were on mine and I was tasting her tongue, lashing my mouth like the serpent in Eden, beguiling me as she always had. Somewhere, dim in my world, I heard a strangled grunt from the back of the boat, but nothing about that mattered now: I had my lady, eager and ready, sharing herself with me.

And that was enough.

We parted in a drooling rope of spit, her smirk curling even as she licked me from her hand. "I remember the taste of you," she murmured, and impossibly, my cock began to lurch its way back to hardness.

"Fuck." I sat up with an effort, fighting against my own lassitude and trying with no success to hold my shirt up off the puddle on my stomach. "I'll have to pay another indulgence," I frumped.

"So you lose your five pence after all, I guess." She laughed, the two of us sitting up as the fisherman and his new catch reassembled themselves back by the tiller. "Mind your sails, you two!" she called, exhilarated as the breeze lifted us through the waves.

Gerald laughed with her, waving as he packed his penis back into his pants. Gytha, walking carefully with her dress gathered above her knees, made her slow way back forward with a grimace. "Fucker was big," she sighed, bending over to peer at her thighs. "And full, too," she added, dabbing his semen off her legs in disgust. She apparently did not share Alice's appetite for the taste of it. She stopped short all of a sudden, staring hard at my crotch. "I could have sworn," she declared, eyes narrowing, "that I woke up specially early yesterday just to clean those trousers."

I shrugged helplessly. "Don't ask me. Ask your lady." I mopped at my belly with my sleeve, knowing I'd stink of cum for a week. "Perhaps I'll drag them in the River, if we ever get there."

Gytha favored me with a sour curl of her lip, but her heart was not in it: she'd just been soundly rogered, and even a woman like that had a hard time being pissy after that. She sighed, plopping down beside Alice with her thighs spread to let the remains of Gerald's muck dry in the sun. "Big boy," she reflected again, but she was grinning as she said it.

So we moved through the water, lazy as a cat by the window, surely the easiest travel imaginable. And I wasn't even paying for it! My mind roved, then, to what should happen in London: a knighthood. Sir Robert of Kestros. Or maybe of Narlica; I had not decided. Bursa, perhaps, for at least people here might have heard of the place.

But then there would be duties, owed to Henry, and money, owed to Henry. New clothing, brighter, better-fitting. Servants and a squire. I had no idea how I might pay the duties or buy the clothes, but the woman whose hand now rested possessively on my crusty belly might give me a solution there. In my wildest daydreams, drifting as far ahead as the steady northeast breeze, I even thought she might marry me.

Sir Robert. Baron of Langham.

And why not? If Tirel was captured and tried? Or killed outright? Or if he just... stayed away? Henry was apparently clever enough to seize the crown as he'd seized the treasury, so why might he not seize Langham and simply bestow it on someone new? On me?

I sighed, a deep one as the sun finally began to sink over the grey line of the land on the right, and Alice stirred beside me. "You okay?"

She was a comforting weight in the crook of my arm, where she'd stayed since that last kiss, and I smiled at the sky. "Sure."

"Good. So, just out of curiosity, would God mind if you ate me out?"

I felt that flop again, down below, the quickening of urges left long-suppressed. "It's my oath, Alice, not yours."

"Just don't do it here, pray," Gytha spoke up from the other side of the netting. "Nobody needs to see that."

"You're hardly one to talk," Alice snapped at her, "whoring yourself for a fisherman a few hours after you met him."

"Christ Himself summoned fishermen to be with him!" she protested. "So what if I did the same?"

I was glad Alice laughed so loudly, since it covered my own chuckle. "Did you summon him, or did he summon you?" she jeered.

A low, tense pause highlighted the creak of the boat, the send of the sea. "It was mutual, m'Lady," she sulked.

"Looked it," I ventured.

"Never mind, Gytha," Alice trilled, and again I could hear her smiling. "I would never scandalize my own maid by satisfying my lusts in front of her." We all waited for the punchline. "I'll wait until you're away, pissing."

"If I were your equal, m'Lady," she yawned after a moment, "I'd tell you to fuck off. But I shan't."

"Wise decision, Gytha." The sail swung to the right suddenly, Gerald pulling the tiller over. "We're turning."

"Wind's been very fair!" the fisherman called from in back. "We probably will make it to Canvey tonight. So there'll be a beach at least, not a swamp." Above us the clouds shifted, the sun swooping from the side of the ship to the front of it, placing us in the shade of the boat's high prow. I sat up, shaking off Alice, and sprang to my feet with my left arm already swinging around.

I answered her raised eyebrow with a shrug. "It gets sore if I sit around too much. I need to keep it moving."

"It's God, punishing you for letting m'Lady jerk your cock," Gytha sneered.

"Stop that," Alice snapped, giving her maid a little slap. "Mind your business. He's almost a baron, you know."

"Yes," the maid agreed, "and once he is, I'll treat him with some respect. Until then?" She glanced pointedly at my stained clothes. "He's just a man."

I ignored her, making my way to the mast to push my arm against it. The motion of the boat had changed at once from the smooth, easy glide we'd been enjoying to a sudden, choppy slap as Gerald began to fight the waves. It was not all that hard to keep my footing, but I thought it might be a bit difficult to keep my breakfast down. "How long will we sail?" I asked the man.

"Until I want to fuck that bitch again," he shrugged, quite unashamed. "Usually I worry about things like tides and moonlight, but that little morsel's given me another reason to take my time." He leaned aside, staring past me at the lounging Gytha. "Actually, if you'd be so good as to mind the tiller, I might just feel like having her again right now..."

"No," I told him firmly. "One, you don't want me sailing a ship. Two, Lady Adeliza is paying you very well to get us to London. Fast." I held his gaze until he glanced away. "You're obviously getting a little bonus here, but you're going to get us to our destination as soon as you can. Clear?"

"Whatever." He eyed my battered left arm, but also my sound right one. And my sword. "I was joking. We'll sail on." He paused. "In London. My wife said you and the Lady are heading up to see some lord?" I nodded. "Got any plans for yon Gytha whenever you do that?" I smiled, and he gave a low snicker. "Well then. I suppose I'll be waiting with her. I can take my pleasure when the time comes. No rush."

"Not for her cunt," I agreed. "The rush is for us to get to town."

"Got it." He peered around at the low line of the land, then searched south. "We'll be able to see the Kentish coast very soon," he judged, "on the other side. And we'll be in the River. That'll slow us down, but not for hours yet."

"Will we have to row?" I feared he'd say yes, and that I'd need to sit by in impotent shame while he did the rowing himself.

"Perhaps?" He glanced up at the sail. "I hope not. I've been able to make the whole trip under sail before. God's will," he shrugged.

God's will, indeed. I leaned harder into the mast. Again, the limb still hurt, the ache duller by the day, muscles easing into their new requirements along the troubled bone slowly and obstinately...

* * *

The boat grated ashore at a smelly, reedy beach long past sundown, the stars sprayed above us in glittering magnificence with the moon ruling them all, much brighter than it had been when I'd hastened east to find Langham. Bluish light covered the earth and the sea, turning Gerald into a shining ghost as he heaved a massive stump over the side and into the mud. "Home for the evening!" he announced.

The women stretched. They'd made us a dinner of salt pork and hard bread as the twilight had gathered a few hours ago, but ever since they'd been whiling away the quiet hours in low conversation as I'd sat by the mast, stretching patiently like I'd promised God I'd do every day. We'd seen a church on the far shore around sunset, and I'd almost asked the fisherman to take me there for the good of my soul, but no.

We were in haste, and London had many churches.

"I'm getting off this boat," Alice announced, surveying the grassy shoreline under the boat. It did not look welcoming. "No trees."

"No, nothing but grass and sand. Bugs. I usually sleep on the boat." He leered at Gytha. "You should sleep on the boat too, woman."

"I just might," she winked, tugging at her shawl. "Might ask to share a blanket, too."

I cleared my throat before the two of them could resume fucking right in front of us. "I'll try to find a spot, Lady Adeliza." I pitched my bundle over the side, toward the grasses.

"I'll go with you," she smiled, eyeing the other two doubtfully. Gerald had stopped paying any attention to us as soon as he shook out the smelly wool blanket he kept in a little box under the decking, and I vaulted over the side and into the wet sand to the throaty trill of Gytha's laughter. I turned back to the boat in time to reach up for Alice, my hands grasping her waist as she let herself fall.

"Ow." I rubbed at my left arm.

"Sorry." She smoothed her dress and smiled up at me, putting her hand in mine. "Shall we?"

I did not intend to walk any further than I'd need to get above the tide line, my boots soon crunching over dry sand, then shell, then gravel, then at last the whisk of the tall grasses along my knees. Alice clung to my hand behind me, the two of us pretending not to notice as Gytha let out a very un-Gytha-like whoop from the boat at the edge of the River. "Here?" she asked as we reached the top of a little dune.

"No." I had spent much of my adult life finding places to sleep under the moon. "Animals will come up here. There's a dell over here to the left, where we probably won't have to listen to Gerald buttfuck Gytha."

"No," Alice mused, "she doesn't take it up the ass. Says it's a sin."

"Oh." The nightshadow drew me into a little grassy fold in the land, the sand soft and dry underfoot. "Well. I'm pleased she's got such a heightened moral sense," I sighed. I swung about to face Alice, her hand still in mine. "Does this spot work?"

"Shh. Listen." We held ourselves still, hearing the wash of the River to the south, the sigh of the breeze in the grasses, the rustle of a vole hunting off to the east a bit. "What do you hear?" she whispered, taking my other hand.

I cocked my head at her. "I hear nothing, Alice."

"No?" She moved, a rustle in the night, her body suddenly pressed to mine. "And now?" When I hesitated, she came up on tiptoe and whispered in my ear. "Do you hear God, Robert?"

I shut my eyes tight, straining, but all I could hear was the liquid sound of her tongue curling along my ear, the rustle of her lips on my skin. "No," I wavered, my fingers tightening between hers, feeling the heady abandonment that comes with wanting a woman. And being able to have her. "I don't."

"No," she whispered, the breath of her voice gusty in my ear, "you don't." The words blew away the last of my doubts, my worries, leaving nothing but her in my arms and my cock already lumping my trousers, still damp and sticky with the load she'd coaxed from me earlier.

Her lips, eager and quick, slipped off my ear, over my jaw, and up to my mouth, our bodies pressing together with the force of the kiss. I opened my lips wide, giving in to what we both wanted, my tongue spearing between her waiting lips with the pent-up desire I'd built over years of chastity, rushing out now into a long, low moan into her mouth. We parted, the moonlight showing a grin on her face. "I've missed you."

"I was in Langham the whole time," she murmured, husky, our bodies swaying slightly. "Winchester wasn't ever very far away."