The Smell of Horse and Leather

"Good. I'm not in the mood to fight today." He showed no fear at all as he stared pleasantly at my incoming brother. "This manor belongs to the son of the Count of Eu now."

"Eu?" I blinked. "Like a sheep?" I cocked my head. "And what's a count?"

He seemed to look fully at me for the first time, his eyes sweeping up and down my body as his smile grew again. "No," he laughed. "Not like a sheep." He waved over at his friend just as Sibald drew up, breathless from his run across the fields.

"Father's coming!" He glared up at the horseman. "Are you a Norman?"

"No!" The man spat. "I'm from Brittany." He stared balefully down at the billhook until, with a guilty start, Sibald dropped it.

"I don't know what that means," Sibald frowned. He was sixteen, and it was rare for him to admit that he didn't know everything. "I thought you were all Normans."

"Me too," I put in. I could hear our door creak behind me; stepmom would be peeking out.

"Yeah, well, Sir Geoffrey is a Norman." He tossed his head toward the approaching rider. Sibald and I looked at each other, spellbound.

"Was the whole world against us?" I muttered. I'd thought all the invaders had been Normans.

"Well," the man on the horse shrugged, "when Duke William sailed, he did have the blessing of the Pope. So."

"Fuck," Sibald sighed. "I wonder what we did? Like, to deserve this."

The younger man, this Geoffrey, looked curiously down at us and said something in what sounded like a very odd language. The older man listened, then nodded. "He wants to know where your lord is. Your, uh, thegn."

We looked at each other again, then back at our stepmother. She promptly vomited on the threshold. "Um, sir?" I said, facing the young horseman but looking at the old one, "I have no idea where Thegn Godmer is, and neither does anybody else here."

The old guy nodded and spat something in that weird language to his companion, who eyed the three of us and said nothing, staring with distaste at the steamy pile of my stepmother's puke. The older man cleared his throat. "So, is your father here? Is he living?"

"He is." Sibald nodded. "He's on his way from the fields. I was faster," he added breathlessly.

"Great. We'll wait for him, I suppose." He gibbered something else, and then he took the younger man's bridle as they both swung off the horses. "Sir Geoffrey wants wine. Do you have any?"

My stepmom threw up again and then shrank back into our house. I sighed. She was always like this when she was pregnant. "I think there's some mead? Or ale?" I wasn't sure whether dad and Osgar had gotten around to brewing any, but I was certain we had no wine. "Or, I suppose we could fetch some water from the well..." I trailed off doubtfully.

The men looked blankly at me, then the older one tried another smile. "Why don't you bring us whatever you have. We'll wait for your father." He nodded toward my doorway. "Your mother? She is ill?"

"She's pregnant." He didn't seem to understand the word, so I mounded my hands over my belly. "You know. With child? Like the Virgin Mary?"

"Oh." He shrugged, glancing down at me. His younger companion said something, and the man nodded. "That bigger house over there, with the second storey? That's your thegn's house?"

"Yes." And that was it, the entire manor: his house, our house, the outbuildings, and nothing else until the Bishop of Durham took over nearby. "He's not coming back," I added, feeling very certain. "Thegn Godmer."

"You're sure?"

"He took our priest with him," I explained, thinking with a twinge about my bees. "They went everywhere together, just about. All his charters are missing, and the chapel money. They knew you guys were coming." I gulped. "He's gone."

They conferred in low-voiced gibberish, then the older guy found his smile again. "Sir Geoffrey and I will be living in his house, then, until William can arrive."

"When will that be?"

"We'll discuss it with your father, I suppose." The young guy was already heading for Godmer's house. "You can take these horses. See to it they're fed."

"Excuse me?" Sibald and I blinked incredulously. "Do we work for you now?"

"No," he sighed. He took my hand in his rough, big fingers and pressed the reins into my palm. "Nobody works for me. We all work for William of Eu, and Duke William the King as well. And they want you to care for the horses," he chuckled, "so care for the horses, girl." He glanced around. "Where do you people shit? I mean, you obviously don't go far to puke, but I assume you've got someplace else where you do your business?"

"Yes," I sighed. "Sibald? Why don't you show him where the privy is."

* * *

Dad gave them the lie of the land: he told them where the Bishop's people lived on the next manor, of the ten freemen with no thegn on the other side of the brook, of what little we could offer to our new rulers. "They seem fine," he mused that night, staring into the smoke. "They're not interested in hurting us. They know they need us in order to make money, and I think being a knight is expensive." He hesitated. "They won't hurt us, but they'll tax us. And we'll work."

"Fuck." I sat on my mat on the dirt floor, staring into the flames, suddenly preoccupied.

"Sir Geoffrey told me how much it cost him to come here. I'm sure it's worse for his lord, this William guy." He leaned back against the bed. "They need us to produce."

"Will we need to give up more in taxes now than we did to Godmer?" Osgar was worried, as well he should be: Mildrith was pregnant, and they'd been looking to move out on their own. "Godmer told me in the summer that he'd think about letting us have our own fields." They lived in a little hut next to the hedge.

"Well, I don't think I'd count on that." Dad was not one to panic, which was just as well. I felt like putting my shoes on and fleeing as far away as I could. I was having trouble holding it together. The two horsemen had badly unsettled me, and now they were in Godmer's house less than a furlong away. Eating our food. I wasn't sure what made me so skittish about them; probably because I'd expected so much worse, I suppose.

"Um, do they have a priest anywhere nearby?" My voice sounded very small in my ears. I was deeply worried that St Valentine would forget about my honey. "I mean, you know... it's almost time to get the bees going..."

"I'm sure Father Felix will be back soon," my stepmother quavered. She looked like death, poor thing.

"I'm not," Sibald muttered. I knew what she was saying, though. She needed his prayers too, for the baby. She had to believe he'd be back.

Dad glanced back and forth between us both, his eyes squinting in the smoke. "It didn't come up," he shrugged. "We spent a lot of time talking about rents." He nibbled on a lump of my cheese. "They tell me Earl Gyrth died in October. The new King picked Radulf as Earl, him that used to be one of the stallers for old King Edward. So at least he's English." He spat. "Our new thegn will be William, the son of some important Norman with an odd name. This William will have almost eighty manors to manage."

"Eighty!" Osgar's eyes shone. "What the fuck!"

"We'll never see him," I said softly. I stirred. "We've ten shillings' value. Less, probably." Everyone was looking at me. "He'll leave those two here, or someone just like them. Who are they, again?"

"One is a warrior, like a housecarl. The other his servant, but also a warrior. That one speaks our language." His face twisted into a scowl. "I better not have to learn their Norman shit."

"The servant. I spoke to him." I licked my lips quickly, the smoke making me drowsy.

"What are we going to do with his horses?" Dad asked me quickly. "They love their horses. I believe there are more coming, too."

"The servant can cope with them, no?" Nobody in our family understood how to care for a horse. "I'll talk to him. What's his name?"

It was a hard glance I got back from my father, shrewd. "Did you not ask him when he came here this afternoon? Before I reached you?"

"Father," I tutted, putting on my smile, "who am I, to ask a horseman his name? I am but a blushing maid who keeps bees."

"Interesting," he cocked his head, "because he asked me about you."

"Wait. What?"

"He did. He seemed quite curious about you."

"The... the young one? Or the old one?" Every eye in the house was on me, but my father only smiled.

"The servant, you idiot," he sighed. "Don't get ideas above your station, and don't you dare jeopardize our position here." He glanced around the little house. "The world is fragile enough."

"Father..."

"He says his name is Bernard." He chewed the last of the cheese. "He says he's known the boy's father for many years."

"The boy's father..." Sibald leaned in, the fire full on his face where he'd just started growing his little wisp of a mustache. "Is he also some kind of rich warrior?"

"I don't know," Dad yawned, irritated. "We didn't discuss each other's family trees, son."

"Well," Mildrith sniffed, "except for Merewyn here." I felt a surge of heat to my face as I flushed. Bitch sounded jealous. We'd known each other all our lives, and now she was taking my brother's cock; I wondered whether I should tell him about her tryst last year with Edmer. I glared meaningfully over at her as I thought about it, and she seemed to get the idea.

Which is to say, she shut her cocksucking mouth.

"Bedtime," Dad said firmly, and as I stole out into the chilly star-lined darkness to use the privy before bed, I glanced over at Godmer's house across the way.

No. Not Godmer's house. Sir Geoffrey's house, now.

* * *

I was up early the next morning, squeezing out from under my mother's old blanket between my brothers and sisters. I had withies to gather, and Thurgis was due back through sometime. He usually left Biggleswade before the sun, and it was only an hour's walk. I normally offered him some bread for breakfast and, when I felt like it, my pussy if there was nothing more pressing to do.

Thurgis was not the sort of fellow to turn down either free bread, or free pussy.

I was also hoping to catch him before he came stumbling down the lane. He wouldn't know about Bernard and Sir Geoffrey and, more to the point, they would not know about him. It occurred to me, as I pulled my cloak about me and stepped out into the grey morning, that I had no idea when they'd be up, what they'd want for breakfast, or what they'd think about a millboy stumbling uninvited into their new manor. Although, I did notice that the two little windows of the thegn's house were still dark as I crept along the lane toward the nearly stripped-out willow copse down by the stream.

Sure enough, as I teetered on the crusty, frosted mud a couple of hours later with Sibald's billhook, hacking away at my branches, I heard Thurgis' shoes on the path from Biggleswade. "Hey!" I called through the bushes as soon as I was sure it was him, "looking for something?"

He pulled up short, peering back toward me in the light of the low sun, his teeth flashing in a grin. "Is that my Little Bird I hear chirping in the bushes?" he chuckled.

I felt a sudden warm surge; for once, his endearment didn't piss me off. Instead, it sounded almost poignant now, a reminder of how much was changing, and how quickly. Just five months ago! Me, just turned twenty, and life going along as it always had, and then King Harold had taken Godmer off to York with his army and now? Here we were.

I licked my lips, stepping through the thinned copse with my bundle laid aside. I'd come back and keep working a bit later, after I was through with Thurgis. Because, see, you had to take your pleasure where you could find it in these days.

He grinned at me and put his sack down. "Ready to choose a mate, Little Bird?"

"Stop that." I drew closer, the mist rising off my breath as I tossed the billhook to the path. "I'm glad I found you. The Normans have come."

"To Millow?" I nodded. "Yeah. They're in Biggleswade, too." He scratched at his nose and looked greedily at my chest. "Well. What's to be done about it?"

"I felt bad," I confessed, stepping into his arms. "I didn't want them to catch you or anything, if you came for breakfast."

"Yeah," he said again, looking down at me. He smelled of sweat and dirt and all those comforting things I'd always associated with men, those things that went straight to my vagina. I leaned into his chest, feeling the warmth off his body. "That's too bad. I was looking forward to some food."

"Well, I didn't say I wouldn't feed you..." I lifted my chin, smiling now, feeling that familiar intensifying flutter at my pussy. He was grinning back, that devilish little gleam in his eye that he'd had ever since the day he'd realized he could have me, back during those long lazy summer days when I tended my bees. Back when Father Felix had prayed for them. "Want to eat?" I whispered, my eyes going coy and mischievous as I nodded toward the copse.

"You know I do." He took my hand and led me boldly back over the crusted mud, past my bundle, to where the bank curved down toward our icy little stream. "How do they seem? Your Normans?" he called back to me as we picked our way through. "The ones in Biggleswade look more afraid of us than we are of them!"

"I'm not even thinking about them. Especially not now," I told him pointedly, and he took the hint as we neared the big ash tree by the water. He'd taken me here a couple times before, but I wasn't interested in being fucked right away; I stopped, glancing down at the ice melting slowly in the stream with my hand on the grey ash trunk, then turned slowly back to face him with the deserted forest path behind. "You hungry?" I asked him, my throat dry with excitement as I leaned back against the tree.

He still had that big dumb grin pushing up on the corners of his mustache as he glanced down at me. "Why? What do you have for me?"

"Look under my skirts," I urged, feeling warm despite the cool of the morning. My ears buzzed, the blood pumping hard through my body, the chuckle of the stream behind me merging with a soft, high breeze that rattled the willow. "You'll find something nice and warm."

"Let's just see about that," he nodded, his voice strained with his lust for me, and once again I felt my strength, the power of my body wrapping him up and taking him captive, pushing him to his knees with a force he craved in spite of himself. "Your dress? Or your shift?" he asked, playing out the charade, but I was no longer in the mood to flirt.

I needed release. I needed to leave my mind.

"Get the fuck under there," I commanded, glaring wildly down at him as his hands found the thick wool of my dress, then the linen beneath, and then lifted them both high. I hadn't worn leggings that morning, thinking I'd probably be getting into the puddles; few things are worse than being stuck in wet leggings at the beginning of February, especially when the morning wasn't all that warm.

It paid off now, anyway, his hands running up my bare legs as he ducked low to get inside my skirts in the quiet morning air. He was game, I always had to give Thurgis that: it had been nearly a week since I'd bathed properly, though of course that hadn't stopped him yesterday in the hen coop. I felt his breath on my skin, my hands moving automatically to where his head made a rising lump up the inside of my shift, my breathing getting faster, deeper, and then his hands were burrowing up the backs of my legs to grip the flesh of my ass.

I arched instinctively, at just the same moment that his face smashed into my bush. "Ohh..oh..." I heard, low and guttural from my own throat, and now when my eyes rolled down I saw that the lump of his head was right there, where I needed it, straight in front of a slit that had gone dangerously overheated, My hand, feeling like somebody else's, clamped onto Thurgis to pull him closer to me.

He breathed first, his mouth blowing hot, moist air between my thighs, across my cunt as my hips moved slowly against him. I felt his nose dig into my bush, then, burying itself as he strained to bring his lips to my slash, his hands still greedy behind me where I sagged against the ash tree. I closed my eyes and let my face go slack, feeling my lips mold themselves into an ecstatic grin, mouth open, ready to start gasping.

It was then, as Thurgis started to work his tongue inside me, that I flickered my eyes open and caught the shadow of the horseman coming from the east, from our manor.

There were only two people it could possibly be, and even then, even as Thurgis' mouth began to pick me up off the ground and lift me far, far away, my widening eyes glanced again, taking it all in: the rider was Bernard the squire, still tall in the saddle, of the roguish smile and the slow, accented speech. He led a second horse on a bridle behind, perhaps... what? Giving them exercise? Searching for fodder? Visiting a comrade in Biggleswade? Whatever. His head swiveled from side to side as he rode, alert to the sounds of the forest.

I didn't mean to whimper. At all.

But Thurgis, ignorant, eager Thurgis, chose that moment to sweep his tongue up through the musky folds of my vagina, to the top where he knew he'd find the trembling, anxious bud nestling like a pearl under its hood, and suck.

Bernard stopped at once, leaning forward, his eyes searching, and too late I understood my problem: this old ash, where Thurgis and I had indulged our lusts before, where generations of Millow youth had probably done likewise, was fairly well-shielded from the path. To a person walking along it. I hadn't planned for a man on horseback, because until yesterday nobody in Millow owned a horse; even Thegn Godmer had needed to borrow one when he'd gone to York in September, a large docile cart-beast from Alwin the Reeve, up in Sutton.

My hand flew up to my mouth, my eyes alive and shining, as the squire swung his face straight toward me. I saw him squint, then cock his head, but by that time the fires behind my belly were starting to spark and crackle and I was able to do nothing at all except stare back at him, my mouth still wide.

Bernard smiled at me.

I was already arching rhythmically against Thurgis, grinding his face into my pussy. I was much, much too far gone to stop just because the squire was watching me. Instead I took my hand off my mouth and swept it down, flourishing my heavy dress up and out of the way so that I could swing my leg up onto Thurgis' stout shoulder, my heel on his back while I let my leg pull him in. I was wide open to him now, willing him to take me away, my body humping eagerly up and down.

And still, Bernard smiled at me.

My head rapped sharply on the ash bark behind me, my eyes screwing closed as Thurgis bore down hard, sucking, even biting, the sting as his teeth pulled my hair adding to the way he was destroying my senses, controlling my mind, until the wrenching tightness in my belly and thighs suddenly, abruptly, deliciously, collapsed in blessed ear-buzzing release.

Bernard watched it all as I melted abruptly onto Thurgis' face and neck, bearing him down as, with a cracked wail, I lost all control. My mind burst in my skull, all my limbs convulsing in a tremble that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the joy he was giving me, the joy I felt strangely, obscurely proud to show the tall squire. I was grinning, ecstatic, the laughter rising breathlessly from deep within me to cough out in barking gasps as I eased slowly back to earth, feeling like a foot sinking slowly into a marsh.

It was over with a dragging slowness that left me twitching and sweaty in the cold morning. Dimly, then, I saw the back of Sir Geoffrey's riderless horse loping calmly west along the path, led by squire Bernard; I was panting hard, the cold air gusting from my lungs as he turned in his saddle and gave me a jaunty parting wave. But by then Thurgis was fumbling out from under my skirts, his mustache glossy with the juices he'd sucked out of me. He squatted before me, looking up at me with a feral gleam in his dark eyes. "You're welcome," he snarled, one hand trailing off my naked leg to fumble at his leggings.