Another Sin to Pay For

It always felt like that, confessing. Cleansing herself. She felt refreshed, born anew. Ready to venture back out into the earthly world, the world of temptation. But she was stronger now. "Two pounds," he mused, "plus some royal forest revenue."

"Take it or leave it." She swept to her feet, suddenly impatient. She felt God within her already, giving her confidence. "Either way, has Holy Mary heard your prayer?"

He glared narrowly up at her, then nodded once. "I reckon she has," he said slowly. He nodded toward his chrism by the horn-covered window, the sunlight bleary outside. "Did you want holy oil, M'lady Godeve, for your soul's absolution?"

"No thank you." Her hand tingled where he'd crossed it; she figured that was enough. "It's summer. The oil makes my skin spotty."

"Yes, it's a problem." He rose now too, shaking his head. "The Lord sends us so many travails, m'lady. Why He couldn't just let us use water for this sort of thing, I'll never understand."

"He works in mysterious ways." They smiled, an odd mix of piety and conspiracy. "I do thank you, Brother," she sighed. "I'm trying."

"You are, my child." He opened his door. "Try harder."

"Go with God," she nodded. The air seemed fresher outside, the sounds louder. More vibrant. And, she found as she got back to her horse, the penitent woman was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Lady Godeve returned the next month, and while Edith the blacksmith's daughter bent over the anvil and had her fill of Osmer the carle, Godeve had another sad little conversation with Brother Gladbert. "Nothing," she told him firmly. "Nothing at all was done, from his side. I swear it on whatever relic you care to name."

"Oh, I believe you," he sighed. "You're many things, Godeve, but you're no liar. Not to me, not before God and St Mary."

"Amen," she nodded seriously. "But I sinned. I did it with my eyes, Gladbert, my eyes alone."

"Yeah?"

"I peeked into the stables when I knew one of the stableboys was... pleasuring himself."

"Doing what?" Gladbert looked up sharply.

"You know." She glanced at his lap, then his hand, and shrugged. "He was... pulling. On his penis."

"He was committing the sin of Onan," Gladbert wailed. "He should be here confessing then, not you! His soul is in mortal peril!" The monk stared at her in grim accusation. "And you told me nothing at all was done, from his side? Shame, woman!"

"Calm yourself, Gladbert. The lad is only nineteen. He has time yet to pray his way into heaven."

He rolled his eyes. "But you. You watched?"

She blushed again. "I did."

"Why?"

She forced herself to face her shame. "You know why." She licked her lips. "He is lithe. Well-formed."

"Eyes like obsidian." He'd heard it all before. "I think it would be safer, m'lady, if you'd married a Norman. People say they all have blue eyes."

"Safer? Certainly. But think of it this way, Brother," she murmured, "if I was in Normandy, it would be their churches benefiting from my shame. Yes?"

He nodded slowly. "Benefiting." He sighed. "Disgusting people. The best thing about Normans is they're all in Normandy, thank God."

"I told you I'd swear on any relic you care to name." She swallowed. "Name one."

He eyed her steadily, his eyes glittering. Calculating. "You spied on a stableboy's sin. That's all?"

"Well," she allowed, "it was sort of a big sin. A big, long sin. A big, long, throbbing sin, Gladbert, if you catch my meaning."

"I think I do." He frowned. "And the lad spilled his seed?"

"He came, Brother, certainly. I wouldn't call it spilling."

"No?"

"Spilled things flow downward." Her eyes shone with the memory: Her Ladyship, hiding in her own stable, peering through a crack in the wattle at where the stableboy sat in the straw, naked from the waist, his thick eager cock spurting high. "This? This... leapt, I guess you'd say."

"So. If I understand you correctly," Gladbert moved on, "you wish to bestow upon this abbey the gift of a sacred relic."

"I do, Brother Gladbert, to the glory of God and of his handmaid Mary, the ever-virgin."

He scowled, but nodded. "I hear the chaplain of Warwick Castle has a piece of the spear-shaft that pierced the side of Our Lord and Savior," he mused. "That, plus a reliquary. Nothing as exciting as the one you gave us that other time." They nodded meaningfully: Thorkil. "Do that, and your sins shall be absolved." He held out his hand for hers, then crossed her palm. "Sound good?"

She smiled thinly. "Go with God, Brother Gladbert."

* * *

Over the rest of the summer and into the autumn, the unfinished St Mary's Priory gained half the revenue of the manor of Chetwynd, a third of Normanton-on-the-Wolds (but only for one year), the Spear-Shaft of Warwick, the Holy Nail from the dying monastery near Wenlock, and a flock of geese. Brother Gladbert was of course pleased by all this bounty, but he was even more pleased at the nature of his lady's confessions. "You're doing so well!" he gushed one day, as the autumn leaves began to crinkle outside.

She made a face, and not because the wine was sour. "You've got much more in your pockets now than you did at the first of the year, Gladbert," she told him waspishly. "I don't think that would be the case if I were 'doing so well,' as you so lightly put it."

"No, but as we've discussed, it's also a question of degree." He nodded meaningfully. "Your, um, your... earthly vessel? Your sacred receptacle?" She frowned, and he rolled his eyes. "Your cunt? It has remained inviolate since before Easter, other than by Earl Leofric. And other than the shepherd in your mouth and that other fellow you told me you'd groped? Almost by accident? The ostler?" He spread his hands. "Your sins, m'lady, are all of the eye and the heart. Trust me. You're doing well. God is pleased."

Her eyes widened. "He told you so?"

Gladbert took refuge in his wine-cup; she could be painfully literal at times. "Well. No. But I certainly feel His holy pleasure on your behalf, Godeve, I do!" She frowned, so he tried a smile. "Lots and lots of people sin that way. Lust happens. The devil loves to tempt people, all sorts of people, and almost all of them sin just a little bit."

"So... it's all right to sin with your eyes? Your heart?"

"Certainly not!" He grimaced. "Do the scriptures not say you're to put out your eye if it leads you into lust?" She shuddered. "I know. That's what penance is for, and the substantial sacrifices that your Ladyship has made to this and other churches are a testament to your heart's desire to love God." He had to be careful here. The trick was to make her feel badly enough about her sins to keep donating richly, but not so badly that she stopped sinning. He'd been a monk a long time, though; he knew what he was doing. "Trust me, Godeve. I've confessed many, many people. If we strictly followed the commandments, everyone in Mercia would have been blinded long ago."

He risked a chuckle, and she relaxed a bit. "Well. That's comforting."

"You'll look at other men. And God will forgive you. But try to keep strangers' cocks out of your mouth or your cunt, that's all. And definitely out of your butt." He smiled encouragingly. "Baby steps."

"But... my hands?" She remembered that ostler, the other week: he'd been bursting out of his trousers for her as he'd watched her ride into the oast-yard, and she'd known it at once. All during her visit, she'd kept flirting, her lashes sweeping over her violet eyes, her mouth constantly smiling at him, until with a daring thrill she'd brushed her hand across the front of his pants while acting as though she'd slipped on some straw. "It's fun with my hands."

"Of course it's fun. That's what the devil wants." He shrugged. "Trust me. Leofric's is the only prick you should be doing anything with. Only." He patted her knee. "You know this."

"I do."

"You need to be courageous. You're gaining in strength every day, but you need to be even stronger. Remember the Armor of Christ." He nodded. "You got this."

"I got this." She nodded, feeling cleansed again; she felt her blush melt away, her mind filling with the holy resolve God gave her at awkward times like these. "Thank you, Brother Gladbert. Go with God."

* * *

Meredith ducked her head into Godeve's little bedchamber at the back of the hall. "M'lady? The dressmaker is coming."

"Ah. Just a moment." She frowned at a little piece of parchment, an old slip scraped thin over months of reuse. The man who'd sent the note didn't have much money. "What do you know about Chetton? It's out near Wales."

"Nothing at all. I'm from the other direction." The maid sidled across the room, her feet silent on the rug. "Why?"

"My thegn there asks me for relief of some of his villagers' taxes." She pondered, looking out her narrow window at the slowly rising spire of her priory in the town. "I can't think why they'd need relief. My ledger tells me there are six slaves living there. How can a community with so many slaves need tax relief?" Obviously they had money.

But, alas, Godeve knew she was a victim of her own kindness. She'd always been fond of remitting rents, sometimes for no good reason at all. She knew it made people believe her heart was soft and pure, but in truth she thought she did it out of guilt. Always guilt; the absolution that St Mary gave her through Gladbert never seemed to make her comfortable for very long.

The maid hovered over her, looking doubtfully down at the ledger; she could not read, but she knew her mistress. "The dressmaker..." she muttered.

"Yes, yes. I suppose I should see him." Last winter she'd been recovering from birth again, so her dresses needed fitting this year.

"He's brought his son, it seems," Meredith added softly. "I caught sight of him when they walked in the gate."

"His son?" She frowned, then shot to her feet and crossed quickly to the window to see if they were still in the courtyard. Behind her Meredith held back a smirk: yes. She knew her mistress.

The window let in the fresh autumn air, the rich smells from the courtyard making that classic English trifecta: sheep, woodsmoke, and piss from the trench behind its wattle screen by the river. She caught the scent of people, too, their sweating bodies working down by the charcoal pit. Of chickens, from the coop where they pecked happily. Of her own kitchen garden, where the dill still possessed that mysterious essence of the shepherd's piss. The shepherd whose cock she'd sucked.

She blushed as she thought of that, marking another thing to confess to Brother Gladbert: a sin of the heart, right there, remembering.

"By the well," Meredith whispered, leaning over; she'd already taken advantage of Godeve's turned back to filch the lid from her mistress' inkpot, a lump of brass she could sell in the town. "That's where I saw him."

Oh yes.

"He's still there," Godeve nodded back, considering. Her dressmaker was Gilbert, a man of distant Norman extraction who'd been putting clothes together for many years. Of course, most people in England simply made their own clothes; there were times, though, when finery was needed for a woman of Godeve's lofty station. The wife of an Earl had many obligations. "Do you know his name?"

"No, mistress." The lad by the well waited with his father's little cart, loaded down with his carefully packed bales of cloth and fur, standing bareheaded in a long tunic and bright blue leggings. "First time I've seen him." She glanced back over at her mistress and decided she was safe to steal one of the glass jars by the basin. She cleared her throat. "I'll fetch Edith, from the kitchens. So you have an extra chaperone. Because the Earl is away?"

"Uh... no." Godeve had just caught sight of the young man's eyes, and seen nothing there but flinty darkness. She felt her cunt give a lurch, that familiar twitch that came hand in hand with lithe young fellows and their dark eyes... "I'll be all right with just you, Meredith. This is Master Gilbert; he's completely safe." Safe, yes, but Godeve added a sin of her eyes to the grim calculus she'd be talking about when next she sat with Brother Gladbert.

"Yes, m'lady." Meredith nodded, her crafty eyes alight, and then scuttled from the chamber. Godeve, trying to control her heart and her vagina both, began laying out her things: two gowns and a coat, draped across her bedstead now, waiting for the prick of Gilbert's skillful needle.

She smiled, tight-lipped, as she wondered about the prick of his son's.

The simple latch clicked behind her as Meredith bowed the men into the room, setting her sweet face in a carefully neutral expression. Gilbert was already grinning as he entered, but Godeve's own replying smile was for his son, following through the door. She lost her breath at once, seeing a quick sturdy young man, his mustache already full and thick beneath a strong, questing nose.

She was relieved that he seemed to look nothing like trusty old Gilbert.

"Won't you come in, Master Tailor!" She beamed, her hands crossed chastely beneath her belly, head inclined in that way that said I am warm and caring, but I am an Earl's wife and you are not. "You'll see that I've got some work for you."

"My Lady Godeve." The man gave that deferential nod he always offered. "I'm delighted to introduce my son Thomas, if I may. He'll be assisting me."

"An odd name," Godeve purred, and it was: she'd never met another. "Welcome to our hall, young Thomas."

"M'lady," he replied, and she thrilled to his voice: deep and rich, it sang directly to her cunt. She started at once to feel that heady, carefree way she'd always felt around men she wanted to fuck. Her body never lied. It always knew what it wanted, and her heart was never loud enough to tell it no.

"It's past time for him to start learning how to be a proper tailor," Gilbert was saying, one of those men who always needed to talk. Silences seemed to scare him. "Stand in the corner with the servant, Thomas," he ordered coolly, already stooping over the bed to study her gowns. "I remember these. I think I let them out, m'lady? When last you were with child?"

"You remember right." Godeve watched as Thomas exchanged a cool glance with Meredith, and she did not like that at all: she decided at once that she did not want him exchanging any kind of glance with her. She never had quite trusted Meredith. The girl was far, far too lively. "Your son seems a bit old to be starting out, yes?" she ventured, glancing at Thomas' trousers.

Alas. The tunic hung too low to give her any idea about whether anything else hung low.

"He's not starting out," Gilbert hummed, examining the green lined gown she'd last worn when King Harthacnut came to visit. "He's been helping me at home for many years."

Godeve nodded, deciding she now had an opening to address the young man. "How many years, Thomas, have you been helping your father? It can't have been many," she probed. "You can't have more than, say, twenty years..."

"I'm exactly twenty, m'lady." His mouth snapped shut the moment he finished; good. He had none of his father's need to prattle. Meredith stood beside him, her head carefully lowered, but Godeve knew she'd be looking sidelong at the fellow's crotch.

"Oh! Well. Then I'd imagine you must be quite... experienced." Godeve licked her lips a moment, feeling her body come alive: her cunt throbbed already, but now her nipples were joining in. She glanced over to make sure Gilbert was paying attention to her clothes and not her words, then smiled at the young man. "Good with your needle, I expect?"

His response made her body flutter all the more: he tipped his head slowly to the side and then raised a harsh black eyebrow, his eyes bold now as they found hers. She wondered whether he understood what she was offering. "You'll find out, m'lady," he said quietly, "God willing."

"God willing," she stammered in reply, watching as those sharp eyes of his roved closely up and down her body. She drew herself up, face tilted, preening for him. Foolishly, yes, but preening nonetheless.

Another sin to pay for.

"Well. I'm sure you're a great help to your father," she smiled, still feeling those flutters. This was going to be a bad one, she knew. She'd not fucked anyone but Leofric since the spring equinox, and none of the men she'd explored since then had satisfied her. In that moment she was transported far, far away from Earl Leofric, Brother Gladbert. Even God.

In that moment, she was nothing but a woman. An empty woman, aching to be filled.

She opened her mouth to continue with Thomas, but it was not to be; his father burst back into her life, now with her winter dresses and gowns over his arm. "Take these, Thomas," he began, "and get the cart ready. We'll get started on these straightaway, m'lady," he nodded, glancing briefly over at Meredith's chest. "A week, maybe?"

"I..." She smiled at him, her mind searching wildly for something, anything she could say to get Thomas back here. Alone, preferably. "I was thinking, perhaps, of adding some fox to the collar of one of my cloaks? It's getting a bit worn."

"Of course!" Gilbert grinned. "We can take that along with the rest, then."

"Well, it's in storage now," she lied. Another sin for Brother Gladbert. "I'll get it out, but I have no wish to keep you. Perhaps you can take care of it tomorrow?" She squeezed the thought out desperately, on the fly, thinking with her cunt, but Gilbert was already nodding.

"I'd be happy to return," he beamed.

"Well, in fact, I'd prefer it if you'd get the other gowns taken care of first, Master Gilbert." Men expected women to dither; fine. She'd dither. "Perhaps it would be an errand that Thomas could handle? I'd feel better," she urged, leaning toward the tailor, "if you were dealing with my clothing personally. Please?"

Thankfully, the man nodded. "Oh, that makes perfect sense. Replacing a fox-fur collar is something anyone can handle," he winked, "even this useless lad here!" He laughed loudly, and so Godeve laughed with him. Even Meredith joined in, much more quietly. Thomas just stood, staring calmly at her. "When would you like him, m'lady?"

Now. Right fucking now, screeched her loins. "Earlier might be best, Master Gilbert. I wouldn't want to take up young Thomas' entire day..."

"I'll wait on m'lady just past breakfast." Once again, that deep voice stabbed straight to her slit, already weeping down her thighs. She dragged her eyes back to his face, feeling her tits rise as she filled her lungs suddenly, needing air. She felt like she was suffocating with need. Out of the corner of her eye she caught a concerned look from Meredith just before she shook her head to bring herself back.

"I shall look forward to it," she managed, but then her maid was ushering the laden Thomas from the room (with her impudent hand on his back, Godeve noticed; she'd need to thrash the girl tonight) and all that remained were a few hollow pleasantries with Gilbert before she could decently get rid of him.

She was lying on her bed later, listening through the window as the goats shat, when Meredith stuck her head back through the door. "They're gone, mistress."

"Thank you, Meredith." She glared over. "We will talk later about your wandering hands." The girl blinked. "On his back? Thomas' back, when he was leaving?"

The girl had the insolence to roll her eyes at that. "M'lady," she began sweetly, "may merciful God forgive me for saying so, but you're a fine one to talk about 'wandering hands.'"

"I should beat you, slave."

"Yes, m'lady, you should. Will there be anything else? I need to piss."

"Go." Godeve waited until she heard her door close, and then she got to her feet and crept to the window to see whether the cart was still standing by the well. It wasn't, but when she squinted out past the gate she thought she saw a flash of blue trousers, descending down the road toward the town. And she thought about the cock within them, and the eyes of the young man wearing them, and about what she'd do tomorrow morning after breakfast.