The Smell of Horse and Leather

"He's... um, he's enthusiastic? And... well." I surprised myself when I winked. "I like his, uh, his..." I trailed off pointedly, meeting his eyes, and we both laughed this time.

"His spear."

"His spear!" I shook my head and smiled, nudging his arm with my shoulder. "He's fun."

"Then you are not as religious as our Sir Geoffrey, obviously." We turned, the path winding down the long slope toward the village now.

"I am far from a godly woman," I admitted. "Quite a sinner, actually."

"We all are. Even Sir Geoffrey. But then, your sinful ways are why you are so eager to find a priest?" he prodded. Gentle but confident, like how he handled the horses. Wise. Again, I felt like a reckless child. I stayed close to him, the smell of leather in my nose. Leather and horses.

"I need a prayer. For my bees." I shrugged. "It's not really anything to do with me, personally. We always need a good honey harvest, so the manor can prosper. So I need a priest to ask St Valentine for his favor to make that happen." He nodded, needing no convincing; everyone understood saints. They made the world work. "So. That's why I need a priest," I finished, a little hopelessly.

"I'll ask Sir Geoffrey for you, if you wish." He said it gravely. He knew this mattered. "When is the day? For St Valentine?"

"Around the Ides." I shook my head. "Father Felix knew. He always took care of it. He, too, thought St Valentine was important, somehow." An Englishman was coming the other way, up out of the valley, glaring suspiciously over at our horses. "Thank you," I added, "for asking."

"There's nothing to thank me for," he shrugged, his laughter returning. "It's easy. It's nothing as difficult as, say, fixing a cart."

* * *

I had my blood a few days later when I went out to take a piss, so when Thurgis came back through for his weekly trip to the mill I had to fend him off. "Come on," he moaned. "I've been looking forward to this!"

"Trust me," I snapped, "you don't want to put your cock anywhere near there right now." My linen hung heavy between my thighs, the whole monthly ritual so very unpleasant. "Don't you dare complain. It's worse for me."

"Well, shit." We stood together on the lane, just past the hedge around the manor, both of us frowning down at where his penis made an obvious tent behind his tunic. "I mean, look at that. It's a disgrace!"

"You'll just need to cope with it." I was in no mood for his whining. "You'll be back tomorrow. I think I might be able to fuck then." This was a lie, but I had a headache and wanted him to get moving. "I'm telling you, just take care of it yourself. God probably won't mind, after all we've done already."

"It's a sin." He looked so mournful, his prick so clearly hard, that I couldn't help but smile sadly. "I can't do that to myself."

I rolled my eyes, charmed in spite of myself, and reached out to cup his crotch. He gave off heat, actual heat, through his wool leggings, his erection strong and firm in my palm. He groaned at my touch. "You know Edmer?" Thurgis' eyes narrowed. He didn't like to be reminded that he hadn't been my first, but my headache was so bad that I didn't care about his feelings. "He used to do it himself when his wife or I couldn't service him. Or Mildrith. It's easy," I wheedled, my wrist beginning to pivot. His leggings were loose, but he was filling them anyway. Filling my fingers, too. I brought my other hand up and tugged at his knot. "So easy." This boy was so predictable.

Suddenly, unbidden, a thought crashed into my mind: I wondered what an older man would be like. Say, Bernard...

"Grr." He was panting already, like Osgar's hound after a brisk run, but he didn't stop me as I pulled the strings and then reached inside, my hand feeling the firm sweaty warmth of his long cock. I could tell he was almost there already. His little coin-purse fell to the ground at my feet, the silver scraps tinkling inside.

"God doesn't care," I whispered, "and even if he does? Bernard is finding me a priest." I stepped aside slightly, pulling harder, both of us looking down mesmerized at the way my nimble fingers moved his veiny flesh. "You can tell him all about it and he'll wipe the sin away." I was murmuring now, my lips at his ear; I did not want to get his spunk on my dress.

I'd just washed it yesterday.

"Merewyn." It came out as a stuttered, broken whisper. "We're right here in the lane..."

"You don't care," I gloated, my hand moving faster now: long, even strokes, my excitement rising almost high enough to make me forget my sluggish body. "Besides, you and I both know this won't take but a moment."

"Fuck." His leggings had drooped to his knees, his balls swinging with the rhythm of my hand, and I barely even noticed when his desperate fingers reached around to grip my ass.

"Go ahead." I hissed it in his ear. "Let it go."

"Ughh!" He gave that strangled, gaspy groan he always did when he came, and then both of us watched as his cum went arcing far out onto the mud, spewing out in four long, powerful spurts I could feel as twinges in my hand.

"That's it." My lips closed around his earlobe. "Get it all out." He needed no more urging though, obviously, his whole body sagging against mine as I finished him. A harsh, eager breath heaved out of him as I took my hand from his spent cock and wiped it affectionately on his tunic. "Now pull your pants up," I scolded, smiling. "You're indecent."

"Oh god," he quavered, though whether it was a curse or a prayer I couldn't tell. I turned away from him and stubbed his white seed into the thawing ground, Thurgis scrambling to put himself back together. "Merewyn..."

"You're welcome," I told him evenly. I kissed his cheek and stooped to pick up his silver. "Tomorrow," I added, tucking some loose hair underneath my shawl.

"Another elflock," he told me shyly. "You just smoothed it."

"Oh. Shit." I shrugged; bad luck. But there was nothing to be done about it now.

* * *

It was late the next morning, the sun high on one of those late-winter days when you can feel spring on your skin and in your bones, when Bernard returned early from his hunt. Not just early: in a hurry, his horse cantering out of the lane and onto the manor with none of his usual good cheer. As usual, everyone but myself and my stepmother was out working, the two of us doing our best to chat as we worked our spindles; well, ourselves and Sir Geoffrey, who usually stayed in Godmer's house, doing... whatever young knights did. Praying? Charters? Writing? I had no idea.

The knight seemed to want almost nothing to do with us. There were times, maybe twice a week, that he took his horse and disappeared, perhaps to meet with his fellow Normans someplace. There were other times, of course, when I saw him come out of the big house to take a shit down behind the wattle by the brook. But more often than not, Sir Geoffrey was a mystery, a light in the window, or a contemplative glance out from his gatehouse with his weird Norman haircut.

I was planning on going out that afternoon to find wild mushrooms, but I was also a bit nervy. Because Thurgis had not come back through.

There had been times, in helping his uncle, that he'd taken two days in Biggleswade, even three. Or times that he'd gone straight home to Morden without passing our home, for whatever reason. But I remembered how eagerly he'd cum the day before, and I thought about how uncertain the times were, and I? I was a bit nervy.

I'd expected him to come through, to find his pleasure where he could. Because I liked being that pleasure.

Bernard's fast arrival, leading Sir Geoffrey's horse for its daily exercise, gave me a start. We watched silently from the side of our house as, without looking at us, he drove the horses quickly toward Godmer's house. And I began to run then, for what I'd first taken to be a large deer slung over the knight's horse, I realized with a sickening dread, was not a large deer.

The squire pulled up on the far side of the manor house, out of my sight, and I heard him bellow for my father. Sir Geoffrey had already heard the horses and sprang down the steps into his little courtyard, and when I arrived he was already helping Bernard unload Thurgis from the back of the horse.

The wound was an awful, vile hack along the side of his neck, his skin pale with all its blood gone. "Oh Jesus!" I blurted when I saw his loose, lifeless body, and the only thing that stopped me from vomiting was that my step-mother, scuttling up behind me as best she could, did it first.

I'd seen plenty of death. Death is a part of life. But I'd never seen anyone killed.

I raised unwilling eyes to Bernard and Sir Geoffrey, who stood frowning down, speaking in voluble French as my father led the rest of the family in from the fields. The squire caught sight of me, and something in my expression must have troubled him; he raised both hands at once. "He was dead when I found him." He nodded down. "A sword did that."

I shook my head in disbelief. Sir Geoffrey had a sword, and Godmer had owned an old one; I assumed the other thegns had theirs, but I'd never laid eyes on another one in the entire hundred. "Where was he?" I sounded shrill in my own ears.

"Toward the village. Where the path starts down to the river, behind a tree." The knight looked very upset, and Bernard soothed him in quiet French. My father looked down at the corpse, examining the wound.

"He was out overnight." Dad fingered cold, dead flesh I'd had in my arms a week ago. That I'd kissed just yesterday. "He feels like this happened yesterday." He glanced up at me with a curiously detached expression. "It's that millboy, yes? From Morden?" His eyebrow rose. "Your friend, Merewyn?" Normally, Dad was already out working whenever Thurgis came through for breakfast. And pussy.

"Thurgis. Yes." I was finding some calmness now, my mind racing, comforting myself: he'd not died with full balls, at least. But he'd died without a priest, in a state of some sort of sin, and he'd made that sin with me. I thought about the disentangled elflock. Every eye was on me now, except Sir Geoffrey's, and I drew myself up as tall as I could. "His purse is missing," I said quietly; I'd picked it up off the ground and handed it back to him, and it had been perhaps half-full. "His uncle in Biggleswade paid him in silver for helping at the mill there."

My father nodded, eyes widening, and glanced up at the two foreigners. "Shame. There's no law now. People are doing as they please." He looked away. "No blame to Sir Geoffrey's countrymen, I suppose, but it's a sad thing that it's taking so long to make order here."

"We have no wish for this. At all," Bernard said quietly. "I agree with you." He muttered to Sir Geoffrey, who raised a stricken face and nodded. "What is the custom here? When people are killed?"

"Custom?" My dad reached out a calloused hand and closed Thurgis' sightless eyes. His dead face wore an expression of mild confusion, as if he couldn't understand what had happened; the closed eyes made him look much better. "There is none. I do not recall a manslaughter in all my days, hereabouts. Few thieves, either. Thegns take care of that sort of thing: we raise the hue and cry, and the people turn out to catch the felon. Too late now." He got back to his feet. "We should send to his people in Morden, of course. So they can bury him."

I cleared my throat. "If... if he died yesterday? Then his uncle never saw him." I shuddered to think of him lying dead out there during the cold, unquiet night. "There might already be a party out, searching from Biggleswade."

"We should send to Morden," my father repeated slowly, looking at Bernard. What he meant was that Sir Geoffrey should get on his damned horse and take word to Thurgis' people, but of course it was not Dad's place to say so. "Now."

"And a priest. We should find one." My voice had found its usual strength. He looked like he was sleeping now, if not for that cruel white flesh and that long, angry red slash halfway across his neck. I swallowed. "Very, very soon, squire. His old thegn is Lady Gode, and she might be living in Woolley. Might have her priest with her, too," I added to Bernard, but I was looking at Sir Geoffrey.

I wasn't even thinking about St Valentine, either. For once.

* * *

I was sitting listlessly outside the manor house's crude gate that afternoon when Thurgis' uncle arrived from down near the river, heading an assortment of whatever villagers could be spared. By that time, Winfled and I had washed the body and done our best to close up the wreck of his neck, so when they found him the two of us stole off back to our spindles. That was the last I saw of Thurgis of Morden, I who'd at least given him earthly pleasure, for awhile.

As for his immortal soul? I was trying not to think about it.

"A word, Merewyn?" I turned, tired out, to see Bernard unsaddling his horse. By that time, Sir Geoffrey still had not returned from Morden. He'd taken the hint at last and gone off with Sibald riding pillion on his big war-horse to show him the way, my brother's face an odd mix of elation and terror, for what Saxon boy truly feels comfortable riding behind a Norman knight? He'd come walking back an hour later, over the fields from the crossroad where he'd guided Sir Geoffrey.

I sighed and yawned. "Just a moment." I wanted to go and sit on the bed in my house, and be alone for a moment... or as alone as I could be with Elfrith and Winfled in there. Just for a little bit, just a little peace. But this was the squire of the man our new lord had sent, and simply refusing him was not easy, so I patted Winfled on the shoulder. "Go in and sit with Elfrith, Win. She's not well."

"She's annoying."

"So are you." I shoved her toward the house and found, from somewhere, a wistful smile for the squire. "Bernard?" I yawned as I walked back to him. It was amazing how quickly I'd become accustomed to his smells, the horse and the leather, the man standing there looking uncharacteristically subdued.

"I am going to ride to Morden. I need to make sure Sir Geoffrey can return here." He shook his head, exasperated. "I can't figure out why he sent your brother back here, but even knights are wrong sometimes, I suppose." Now he did give a faint smile, tired like mine, and I was almost overpowered by the impulse to take his hand.

Almost.

"When... when you found him..." I swallowed. "Did it look like it had been, you know, slow?"

He pursed his lips and looked away. "In my life, I have seen many men slain by swords, Merewyn. Sometimes I can tell how they died." He hesitated, then nodded toward where Thurgis' uncle waited. "You saw his face. It wasn't a grimace of pain."

"Good." It came out as a sob, the day's tension finally aching out of me, and then? I did seize Bernard's hand. It was warm and rough, calloused from years holding reins. His fingers pulsed on mine. "I'm glad you're who found him. So that he could be... cared for."

He nodded, pensive, and when he spoke he had even more trouble with English than usual. "I realized who it was. That it was your friend." He swallowed. "My first thought was that you would be afraid we had done it, I or Sir Geoffrey."

"You didn't," I protested, and truly, the thought hadn't entered my mind.

"No. But it probably was a Norman." He looked down. "Who else here has swords?"

"Shush." I shook my head. "We'll never know, unless someone suddenly has a bunch of silver they didn't have before." I sighed. "I'll miss him. This year has had such loss. It makes me wonder whether I'll still be here to gather my honey."

"You won't, unless I can find you a priest." It took me a moment to realize he was trying to make a joke, though a very awkward one under the circumstances. I smiled up at him anyway. "This other thegn? The one you think might have a priest? Is she far?"

"Woolley? I have no good idea. I've never been there." I frowned. "Two days, perhaps? It's north of here, like in the next shire."

"What's a shire?"

"Never mind." I wasn't really sure myself; I'd heard Dad say something like that once. "Just... it might even be over the river; I wouldn't know."

"Who would?"

"Nobody." I thought a moment. "Wait. You're saying you'll go there?"

He shrugged. "My lord is your lord." He let my hand go, leaving it tingly, then spun around to mount. "You need a priest, and... well. So does the boy over there." He swung his horse around. "Morden?"

"Straight east. A mile or more." I managed another smile. "I'm sure you'll have no trouble finding one young Norman in a sea of Saxons."

"I am perhaps not as good a finder as you think I am," he said ruefully.

I licked my lips. "You seemed observant enough the other day," I told him, blushing, and he just smiled as he kicked the horse past the gate.

* * *

"So. Once we find the priest, what happens? He says the prayer for your bees, and then off we go?"

"I don't know," I confessed, gulping slightly every time the horse sprang over a puddle. "Father Felix always knew what to do."

"Then why did you bring that... basket? That hive?" He turned in his high saddle, up on the big grand war-horse, and smiled back at me.

"It's a skep," I grated, my hips and thighs aching already. We were on the verge beside the old Roman Road, my teeth gritted hard against the lurching sway of the horse, my mind scrambling as it tried to figure out for the fiftieth time what the fuck I was doing on Bernard's riding-horse, heading into the unknown with a bee-skep behind me.

"Yes," he nodded patiently, his own body moving smoothly with the motion of his stallion while mine bounced helplessly in the oversized saddle behind, "but your Father Felix is gone. That's why I told you to come: so that you could tell the priest what he needs to say about your... your skip?"

"Skep."

"Whatever." He shrugged and turned back around. "I would suggest, beekeeper, that you should perhaps think of something to tell this priest? Once we find him?"

"He'll be a priest!" I wailed, my tits bouncing high with the motion of the beast beneath me. I'd be hurting everywhere tonight. How the hell did people like Bernard do this every day, living in the saddle? "He'll know what to do," I insisted. "Lady Gode's people keep bees too; surely they've asked him about St Valentine before."

"Why? I never had," he pointed out reasonably, "and Sir Geoffrey's father has people who keep bees. I'm quite sure they never paid for prayers around this time of year."

"Well, they're Norman," I hissed. "What the hell do they know?"

"Maybe nothing," he laughed, "but their honey always tastes just fine!"

I scowled at his back, mindful of my legs; we'd only been riding half a day, and I could see no possibility I'd be able to keep this up until night. And then again tomorrow, to Woolley. And then the next day, back home. The thought made me want to curl up in a little ball on the hard saddle.

The plan had sounded well enough: find Lady Gode, pay an indulgence for poor Thurgis' soul (a silver penny and a half, given up by his uncle the Biggleswade miller), get my new skep blessed, and then back again by the day of St Ermengild Queen of Mercia on Wednesday, the day before St Valentine's. Or later, if it took longer to find Gode's priest: as long as Sir Geoffrey's silver lasted. He'd given Bernard ten pennies of King Edward, and Bernard wouldn't tell me where the knight had found them. "There was money aplenty, after the battle in October," was all he'd say. We'd found a manor just north of Biggleswade, where one of the people had heard of Woolley and pointed the way north. Past Buckden, he'd said; you can ask people up there. It'll be simple!

Simple, yes. If it weren't for the need to ride ten leagues up into the unknown on a horse that seemed not at all disposed to make my life comfortable, though the thing clearly knew I had no business being on the back of it, but was kind enough to walk gamely along beside its master.