The Smell of Horse and Leather

The man nodded. "You're carrying my burden, good lady, so I shall relieve you of yours." He smiled, broken teeth in a wrinkled face. "Follow me. It's not far."

Bernard and I traded a glance as we meandered along the riverbanks behind the stooped little man, the squire at last striding up alongside him. "So. We need a place to rest tonight. I don't suppose you know of anyone who has room?" The man glanced up at Bernard. "We've got a little money," he lied.

"What brings you here to Eyensbury with money?" he asked with a braying laugh. "There's money enough here, as your Norman friends will find out well enough once they decide to stir themselves from Coventry and come take us over."

"Where is Coventry?" I asked.

"It's up thataway," he shrugged, waving his arm vaguely west. "I was born there, but I've been here most of my life."

"I am Bernard of Guerville," the squire said quietly, obviously deciding it was time we found out who we were speaking to.

"Godric." They nodded at each other. "Godric of nowhere, son of no one. I make glass down along Hen Brook." He jerked his chin ahead of us, to where the little river-lane sloped down a gentle slope. "You can pee in the brook instead of the river, girl," he added over his shoulder.

"Whatever. I'm not particular."

He chuckled. "I saw you two arrive, over the river. I'm no rider myself, but I will say this: you stood out a bit."

"See? I told you." Bernard had half-turned to give me a smirk. "People always notice a beautiful young woman on a horse."

"It's not because she's pretty," the little man snorted, "it's because my sack sits that horse better than she does." The two men laughed, my face reddening.

"You can both go fuck a sheep," I snapped, in no mood for mockery.

"I remember a time before I left Coventry," he sighed, looking wistfully down across the river, "when I saw a really pretty girl on a horse. She was the wife of Earl Leofric. She stripped all her clothes off one day and rode a big cart-horse through the town." He shrugged. "I forget what it was all about, but it certainly was fun to watch."

"The Earl's wife?" I asked, suspicious. This couldn't be true. Word of an Earl's wife riding nude through a town should have spread far and wide. "When was this?"

"Oh... awhile ago. Godeve, she was called. She's still there, a thegn up that way, though I'm sure she's gotten quite old by now. And obviously, she won't be a thegn for long, now that your folk have come." He nodded at Bernard, though not unkindly.

"I don't know." Bernard glanced back at me. "Most of the Normans are interested in profit. If she can help them make money, and doesn't make trouble for herself, they might not bother her much." He paused. "Some of us are quite happy to be friends with you."

He shrugged as if it all had nothing to do with him. "Leofric died, oh, perhaps ten years ago now, but she was quite a bit younger than he, as is often the way." He shook his head. "Yes. She could certainly sit a horse that day," he cackled.

"A Norman lord is unlikely to have let his wife do such a thing," Bernard observed with a laugh, "and I feel sure he'd have put out the eyes of any man who watched it."

"Well, I heard it was on his account that she did it." We stepped past a small hedge, enclosing a little smallholding: house, coop, and a curious skep-shaped building with a tall stone chimney. "I don't know the details, but she was trying to spite him somehow. They say she was certain nobody would look at her, but of course we all turned out with wide eyes." He sighed. "Great tits on her. Well. Welcome." He nodded toward a line of bushes and low trees at the far side of the holding. "There you are, Merewyn of Millow," he grinned. "Go on into those bushes and piss as much as you like."

"Thank you," I said dryly, dropping the reins as I hauled my skirts up to hurry across the bare yard. "Most kind." Every part of me ached, yes, but nothing so much as my straining bladder.

On the whole, finding Godric seemed to be a lucky break. But Godric or no, I'd have pissed in that brook regardless.

* * *

The men were sitting on benches around a fresh fire when I made my way into his low house. Night was already falling outside, and they seemed to be haggling over lodging for the night. As I sat down on the ground beside Bernard's bench, gathering my skirts about me, I frowned as I realized they were both speaking another language. I craned my neck irritably up at Bernard. "Wait. What the fuck? Latin, too?"

"A wise man knows many tongues," Godric chuckled, and once again Bernard gave me that I told you so look. "A wise woman, too. You should learn, Merewyn of Millow. Your friend here says he's offered to teach you Norman, and the way things are going?" He shrugged. "I might just take him up on that myself."

"I insist you take our money," Bernard said in English now. He seemed a bit troubled. "My horses will destroy your grass, so even if you say we're even because we hauled your sand, I still think we owe you. To be fair."

Godric waved all this away. "Your horses won't do anything my sheep aren't doing already. I'm telling you you're welcome in my home. Take it or leave it, Bernard of Guerville; either way, I'm working late in my shop anyhow. I've slept there before."

"Oh no!" I protested. "We'd never presume to take your whole house..."

"I'm telling you, it's even warmer in there, once I get a fire laid. I have to sort out my sand and my ash for work tomorrow. The monks at the priory need their colored glass windows and their chalices," he went on, his voice going ironic, "and I'm happy to take their money. So. It's settled." He spread his arms. "My home, such as it is, is yours tonight. You can cook breakfast tomorrow, if you still feel you've a debt to pay."

Bernard sighed heavily. "You're too kind, Godric," he said heavily, "but I thank you." He glanced down at me. "How're your legs feeling?"

"Like shit."

He chuckled. "I'll go care for the horses, then. You try to get some rest. I'd suggest lying on your back, on the ground, and trying to stretch." He shrugged at Godric, who nodded. "She's a new rider," he explained.

"It showed," the little man snickered.

"That's not nice," I scowled.

"I don't have much to eat," he warned, "but I'll share what I have."

"So will we." Bernard got to his feet beside me. "We brought provision as well." He nudged my hip with his foot. "You heard me, beekeeper. Lie down by the fire and stretch out."

"Kicking me is not a way to make me feel better," I sniffed up at him. He just laughed as he went out to see to the horses.

* * *

"You're being silly," I told Bernard. "Get into the fucking bed."

"I'm fine on the floor." He spoke with the stilted dignity of a man unhappy to be making a sacrifice, but wanting to be seen to be happy about it. "I'm a squire. I'm used to nights without a bed."

I sighed loudly. Godric had left us half an hour before, insisting we were to treat his house as our own, and ever since then we'd been bickering about stupid shit. So, in other words, treating his house as our own; my father was always bickering with his wife, I was always bickering with my sisters and brothers, and I was not about to let Squire Bernard make me feel guilty about lying on Godric's bed.

The house was smaller than my family's, but then six people shared the two beds in Millow. Here, there was (presumably) no one but Godric. And me, alone in a bed for the first time in my life. "Come on. Don't be a martyr."

"You need your rest, beekeeper. Your body needs to recover from the ride. Stretch out." He sniffed from the darkness of the floor, the fire at its lowest sullen crackle. "Besides, I have no wish for our host to come in and find us in bed together."

I snorted. "What does that mean?"

"I think you know." He sighed and then I heard his blankets shift in the dirt. "Men and women, sharing beds. Do I need to explain it to you in a community like this?"

I laughed. "Spoken like a man who's grown up with more beds than I did. A 'community like this' is full of people who grew up cramming in with their brothers and sisters." I sat up, my hips feeling much better after my careful stretching by the fire. "Look, Bernard, if you don't come up here, I'll come down there. It's silly for you to be uncomfortable. And cold, too. Nobody cares if you and I share a bed, least of all me. Remember when you were so worried about you and me coming back out of the forest together, when you shot that deer?" When you saw me cum? "I told you: nobody cares." I patted Godric's thick blankets on the straw mattress. "So. Get into the fucking bed."

He sat up in his blankets, his eyes shining in the coals of the fire. We'd gotten ready swiftly once Godric had left us, me hesitating just a moment before I'd taken off my dress and leggings and smoothed my shift over my body in the low firelight. He'd lain down fully dressed but for his shoes, not without a curious glance at me as I'd taken off my shawl. But of course: it was the first time he'd seen my hair. "You're sure?"

"Don't make me come down there, Squire Bernard."

It came then, that smile of his that was never very far away. "If I was as devious as those priests up the hill thought I was," he reflected, "that's exactly what I'd do. Then I'd leave you down here and take the bed for myself."

"When, in fact," I muttered, smiling back despite myself, "you just want to help me. To live at peace with me. Like the way you took England." I rolled my eyes, hoping he could see it in the low glow. "Start by coming to bed, Bernard. I insist." I scooted over in the blankets, pressing my body against the wood of Godric's wall. Most of his buildings were wattle, but this one was stout and snug and as comfortable as he could make it.

He scrambled to his feet and stood there in shadows, looking uncertainly down at me. "I suppose I should take my leggings off?"

"I'm so tired it's not going to matter," I yawned. "Don't you want them to air out by the fire?" I frowned. "I mean, you people do stink, but if you're sharing a bed with me, I'd rather you at least make an effort." I was enjoying this. He had always been so very easy to needle, the fun of talking to him spiced by the nagging awareness at the back of my mind that there was something somehow wrong with me flirting with an invader.

I was quite certain I should not be inviting him to my bed. And I didn't care.

I watched as he reached under his worn tunic and fumbled with his leggings, undoing the ties. The Normans wore tunics a bit shorter than Englishmen did, and cut closer to the body; I wondered darkly, wickedly, if his falling leggings would show me the head of his Breton penis dangling beneath the tunic hem.

They did not.

His bare legs flickering in the coal-glow, Bernard sank down onto the mattress. "You don't have to scrunch all the way over," he said somewhat reproachfully. "You've insisted I join you; the least you can do is not treat me like a leper."

"Calm down," I snapped, wondering if he could tell that my heart was beating faster; for, whether I'd been lying to myself or not, this was not just another time sharing a bed with someone. This was all so unexpected and, perhaps, even sinful. Definitely it was more than a little naughty. I resisted looking to his legs, or between them. "I'll let you get settled, then I'll adjust. You're an old man; you need your rest. I can make myself comfortable almost anywhere."

"Yeah," he muttered, pulling the blankets over himself. He'd left his own on the packed earth of the floor. "So?" he asked lightly, the bedropes creaking beneath us. "Do I stink?"

"Like leather and horse," I sighed, "but I've gotten used to it." I shifted, settling myself on my side a bit closer to him. Godric's bed was not terribly wide, but it was wide enough; as a girl, three of us had squeezed into something even smaller. I could feel the heat off his body under the blankets. "I'm sure I smell almost as bad," I allowed.

"Worse," he said, after a pause.

"No." I hesitated, then pushed gently against him. The bed was big enough that I didn't need to. But I wanted to, and that surprised me a great deal. I decided in that moment that I shouldn't think too hard about it; I wanted it, and that was enough. So I curled my body against his, because you have to take your pleasure where you can find it in this world. His smell swirled around me now. "Almost." When he chuckled in reply, I could feel it rumbling through his ribs and into mine. Shyly, I looked up at his shadowed face. "You were smart to come up into the bed."

"I'm not as sure as you seem to be." His arm, pressed against the mattress under my body, gave a convulsive push; I understood he wanted to put it around me, so I let him. His hand found my hair, my face resting on his upper arm. "I'm not sure I was smart to even take you with me on this errand, to tell the truth."

"No," I agreed after a few seconds, for I was starting to feel the same way, "but yet here we are."

I felt his fingers in my hair, twirling it. Making elflocks. "I was impressed by you today, beekeeper," he admitted.

"It's Merewyn." I was almost whispering now, we were so close. His breath smelled like the cheese we'd brought, which we'd shared with Godric. It was cheese I'd made myself, and when the men had praised it, I'd glowed. It thrilled me now to smell it on his breath, to know I'd fed him. "As you well know."

"Merewyn."

"What could I possibly do that would impress such a seasoned soldier?" I teased. My hand flexed on my hip, impatient: I wanted very badly to touch him. The time wasn't yet quite right, but it soon would be. I could feel it.

"You rode all day without complaining," he smiled. "Most new riders complain."

"I never complain," I murmured back, "unless my bees sting me."

"Yes?" The low light showed his eyebrows rising. "They sting you?"

"I told you they do. Then we had a long discussion about French, and you made a pun about me being pricked." I listened for his reaction, for a scoff or a gasp or a sigh, and I heard nothing. So I pressed on. "As you know, I've been pricked before."

"You're a sinful girl," he agreed mournfully, his fingers raking more quickly though my hair. "And with no priest to keep you in line. Nor any husband."

"I told you." I could hear the huskiness in my voice, and I knew that now was the time: my hand found his chest through the fine wool of his tunic. "I don't wish to settle for men around Millow, squire."

"But there are new men around Millow now, beekeeper." I could hear the smile in his voice even without the orange glow on his teeth.

"Merewyn," I whispered, my hand slipping over his belly. Lower. We were both breathing deeper now, and in unison, but his hand locked suddenly around my wrist. "What is it?" I asked into the sudden, heavy silence.

"We shouldn't," he whispered, but he still smiled.

"No," I agreed, "but we are sinners."

"Still." He paused, his chest rising and falling; I could actually hear the air there, we were so close. "I shouldn't."

"Shouldn't... what?" I felt my own lips curl up, my grin triumphant. I was too far along now, growing determined instead of simply curious. "Shouldn't... be getting hard for a young English beekeeper?" I giggled, my fingers twitching at his tunic, down near his navel. "Is that it?"

"I knew, that day by the ash tree," he nodded, "that you'd be a problem for me."

"Someone recently told me I'm a sinful woman," I murmured back. There was a roughness now at the edge of my voice, the same way I'd gotten with Thurgis and with Edmer before him, when my body could no longer handle the way I was holding it back. "That I need a priest. Or a husband." My hand wanted to continue, to reach down and hold him: I knew exactly what I would find down there.

And, God help me, I wanted it.

"This is unwise," he mumbled back, but without any real conviction.

"Then move my hand, Squire Bernard." His fingers still twined themselves in my hair, comforting. "Move yours, too, while you're at it."

He laughed now, a low gurgle. "Which way?"

"That's for you to decide," I whispered. "You're my overlord now, right? Sort of?"

"I'm lord of nothing," he insisted. "Not even my own body, apparently." He decided then, pushing my hand where I wanted it: down along the corded muscles of his groin, to where I felt his long, hard penis pressing up under his tunic. My fingers closed around it as if it was made for them. "As you'd have found out, eventually."

"Yes indeed," I gloated, "so why were you waiting?" I took the lead now, reaching low to pull up his tunic, desperate to feel his flesh. He groaned as my hand closed firmly around his warm, hairy balls. "See? Isn't this better than lying on the cold floor?"

His fingers had tightened on my scalp. "I should listen to you more," he sighed. "I am new to your country and its customs. And its rather eager women."

I giggled. "It appears, squire, that a cock works the same way in France as it does here." He was already trembling as my fingers trailed up along his length, feeling taut flesh and thick, eager veins. "How long has it been, Bernard?" I wasn't giggling now; I'd gone serious, my hand enjoying him, thrilled that he was enjoying me too.

"Since I've had a woman?" He stared up at the thatch, pondering. "It was here in England. Before the big battle, down by the coast." He shrugged. "October. A maid we'd brought with us from Normandy."

I raised my eyebrows, my hand never stopping its slow, feathery travels up and down his cock, flitting over his balls. He'd opened his legs slightly. "So you've never had an English girl?"

"You forget," he chided gently, "I spent almost a year here, before. When I learned your language." He gasped as I jerked him, just below the swollen head, working by feel. He was a thick one, girthy. Brutal. "I learned other things, too."

"Not enough, apparently," I giggled, "or you wouldn't have even thought about the floor." I closed my palm completely around him, squeezing hard. "So. Since October."

"Since October," he groaned. His hips had begun moving, almost imperceptibly, fingers still tightly woven in my hair. "You're going to make Godric's blankets all messy, beekeeper."

"No I won't," I purred confidently. I loved this, this power I had. It was what I'd loved about Edmer too, and poor Thurgis. I was Bernard's world now. I was everything to him, and it made me feel good. If it felt like sin, it wasn't the sin of lust: it was the sin of pride. And I didn't mind it any more than he did. I released him, my touches gentle again, like a feather once more. "I would never be so rude to our host." I pulled his tunic high, my hand running over his abdomen now, the hair of his chest. "I have a plan."

I'd never touched such a hairy man. It reminded me he wasn't young, that he was a man of experience. That he deserved the pleasure I longed to give him. I leaned up, my face moving to his chest, entranced by his warmth, his strength, his smell; the low orange firelight showed me scarred skin as my lips reached out, kissing his nipples. He groaned again, his body sagging against the mattress as, again, my hand crept down to cup his balls. "Fuck," he sighed, and there was a warning in it.

He would not last long.

I thought about stopping, pulling back, teasing him. Letting him enjoy me as I was enjoying him, but my brain was melting by then, my lips tasting his sweat. I was too far gone. Quickly my fingers curled around the hairy nest where his cock pulsed, rooted to his body, squeezing him there as I swept tongue and lips downward, underneath Godric's blankets, my hair a veil across his body.

I huddled over him in the close, warm darkness, ignoring the ache in my thighs, my tongue darting out by feel to finally, wondrously, taste the head of his penis. I came away salty, the thick fluid there coating my tongue, and he groaned once more as I went back down onto him, around him, engulfing him, my mouth opening wide to devour him.