A Royal Affair (36 page)

The night he achieved his goal, therefore, was memorable for us both, given all the preceding disagreement, despite how easily it was finally achieved. I was feeling particularly mellow that night, for he had been using the sweet almond oil on me, pummeling it into my skin, pressing on aching muscles and turning me into something that more resembled a creature without bone than a man. I was entirely at his mercy when he began teasing my most sensitive areas. I was too far gone to care all that much. I do not remember drifting to sleep, but I do remember waking, hollowed out with hunger to be filled.

Aleksey was hot against my back, breathing evenly in sleep, with his cock rigid and pressing against me. It suddenly seemed foolish affectation on my part to deny this longer. Perhaps I’d been denying him for other reasons. Was it not the fundamental difference between a man and a woman that in all coupling a man took the active role and a woman the passive? She got entered; he did not. Did I not love to look at this beautiful man and know that I had been inside him, that I owned him in a way he did not me? If it were true, I was done with it. I wanted to be owned. I wanted Aleksey to own me.

I swore softly for being such a fool for so long, put my arm back, and pulled him into me. It was clearly one of his better wake-up calls. He processed what was happening very quickly and took full advantage of the moment. Without any words needed, I found myself on my belly and Aleksey flexing his very powerful muscles upon me, thrusting hard.

In all my nightmares, in all my reliving the awful events upon the whaler that had brought me to my new life, I had never dreamed that penetration there could be so pleasurable. Where was the pain? Where was the sense of unmanning that had assailed me upon the ship? I was Aleksey’s master, and I
required
him inside my body. I demanded, commanded, controlled, and I was filled as I had never been before. Love changes everything. I lay as a woman with a man’s cock inside my body, and everything in my life that was wrong realigned in perfect harmony.

My epiphany did not last very long. Aleksey, awed by the experience, flooded me before either of us was truly awake or processing what was occurring. He gasped, shuddered, hung still for a while, and then collapsed upon my back. It was very pleasant, having him there, for he had not yet pulled out, and of course… I was ready for more. He’d only scratched the surface of the deep need I suddenly discovered for his cock inside me. I’d felt something sublime, but then he had completed. I could see that we had a very long and pleasant road ahead of us, exploring all the byways of this new adventure.

We began as soon as he’d recovered, which, as he was only twenty-four, was very soon. This time, relieved once, he was able to explore the new experience fully and for a very long time. I was not too worried how
he
was experiencing it, for I was fully occupied by my own feelings. Had I known that this delight awaited me, I would have pulled him into me a great deal earlier than I did. It was incredibly good to lie there and be pleasured, to be brought to completion so uniquely. I never found it demeaning, but rather the opposite: it gave me even more power in our relationship. I still dictated how and where and when, only now I dictated on my belly with Aleksey deep inside me.

He could never thrust too hard for my liking, and my body was always ready to take him in. For many days, this was the only way we made love, for it was so novel, and we wanted to explore all its many positions and intricacies. I knew them all with Aleksey, of course, and he wanted to explore the same with me. Unfortunately, we were not free to indulge ourselves all day. All this in our personal life was squeezed between his royal duties, which were endlessly tedious.

T
HE
ONLY
bright moments of the week, other than our far more personal ones, were the times we managed to get together with our little reforming group and plan our new and improved Hesse-Davia.

After the compromise with the death penalty law, we’d had some notable success with our plan for the army. Each town now had a small garrison, and the officer in charge, usually a major, administered the law. Of course, each major had an experienced garrison sergeant major to assist him. Priests were constrained to taking confession and mass and other church duties. His
Worshipful
the Cardinal—I never did bother too much with these people’s titles—could hardly complain about this, for Aleksey assured me the rule book did not say that Christian priests got to decide the law. In fact, he told me with some amusement that, as far as
he
was aware, there
were
no Christian priests in the bible at all, something that clearly told me he hadn’t actually read it. After all, how could there not be? So, for the first time in Hesse-Davia, ordinary men and women could present themselves to an authority with a complaint and hope to receive justice. I do not pretend that all our officers were wise, grizzled old war veterans with hearts of gold, out to right the wrongs of injustice. Clearly they were a mixed bunch, like all men. But they were a damn sight better than the priests they replaced, that I do know. And of course, most importantly, they all answered to Johan and ultimately to Aleksey, which the priests had not.

Effectively, we diverted the torrent of power. It had flowed from its source, the Pope, through Harold and then to the priests. Now it flowed from Aleksey through Johan and down through the army to the people. I actually saw this as a visual thing in my mind: previously foul water being diverted, clean and fresh and wholesome. Of course, I was something of a specialist in the relief of poison.

I had just created my biggest sweat lodge.

I
T
WAS
a miracle, really, that Aleksey and I got to spend as much time together as we did, for even in our new villa, we had to have servants and guards, and Aleksey had to constantly travel the short distance to the castle to carry on the business of the state. We’d tried to reduce the number of servants who had direct access to us, but this was often inconvenient. Neither of us was at all domesticated, and I doubt any king in the whole of Europe sat on his throne in hastily donned breeches from a night of debauchery. My clothes even seemed to go missing, and I would have accused him of taking and wearing them had we not been different sizes.

So we had to have servants, and I knew they suspected what was happening. Why did the first minister come out of the king’s apartments clutching his shirt in his hand? Why did the king have finger-shaped bruises upon his derrière quite so often? What they made of his sheets in the mornings, I have no idea. I was only glad I did not volunteer, as I had once intimated that I would, to be the master of the royal bedchamber. I was very content being the one messing up the king and not the one who had to consequently tidy him.

I ignored the inner voice that told me we were living in a fool’s paradise and that it was all about to collapse around us. I was high on a ridgeline in the sunshine, Aleksey by my side, with an excitement for the charge, the plunge through still, cold air with my lance erect, that
nothing
could curtail. I knew I should see the fog and chaos of life, the turning to mud and the disillusionment. I
knew
this, but still I allowed myself those moments of pure, unadulterated lust for life, for brotherhood, for love.

A
LEKSEY
DID
not return to the summer villa for a second night. The first night I had been told by a courtier that his majesty was attending a state dinner for a visiting official from France and that he would, therefore, spend the night in his old rooms. Initially this surprised me. I had not been informed of the visit. As chief minister I assumed such things would form part of my duties. Then it occurred to me that Aleksey had deliberately not told me to spare me what I would inevitably term
boring nonsense
. Or perhaps he wanted to spare himself having to coax and cajole me into a good mood after I had suffered tedious greeting ceremonies and a meal where I could not sit alongside him and pass him wine in novel ways. I was not alarmed, therefore. I
was
put out, though, for I had rather got used to Aleksey in my bed and in my body, so I was in a very bad mood and did not sleep well that night—on my
own
. So when a second courtier arrived the following evening to announce that the king was in conference and likely to be absent once more, I determined to ride to the castle and see what was happening. I thought Aleksey was probably being bullied by his uncle into signing things he did not want to sign, and to avoid having to confess this to me, he was avoiding the palace.

I was arrested as soon as I dismounted from Xavier.

They had been waiting for me, castle guards I did not recognize and in force of numbers I could not resist. I was taken straight to a dungeon, which is enough to quail the heart of any man, however brave he thought himself. As the door clanged shut behind me, I had a very vivid image of it never opening again. Who knew I was here? Who would come for me? My second and better thought was for Aleksey. What was happening to Aleksey? I wasn’t so worried at this stage that I thought he was in a dungeon too. He was the king. Even in Hesse-Davia, kings were not thrown unilaterally into dungeons. Were they? The first minister just had been.

J
OHN
CAME
to me the next day. He was not so stupid that he came inside my cell but stood outside the door, peering in through the little window. “Hello, Niko. May I call you Niko? I’m not sure we ever decided that—the night you were so appallingly rude to me.”

“The night I wouldn’t fuck you?” I came up close to the window, intimidating him even in my unfortunate position. He actually had the nerve to dab effeminately at his nose with a clean handkerchief. “What is this about? I want to see the king.”

He smiled, and I could tell immediately that I’d handed him a perfect cue, and like an actor upon a stage, he took it, saying with a flourish, “Ah, but the king doesn’t want to see
you
.”

This was ridiculous, and I wasn’t in the mood to play his games. “Where is he? What is this all about?”

“About? About…. Good question, sir. That is exactly what poor little Aleksey said when we told him what you have been up to.”

I darted my hand through the window to grab his throat, but he was just that little too quick and the angle wrong. I only ended up with a bruised shoulder. He watched me rubbing it, his head cocked to one side like an inquisitive bird. “Don’t worry, Niko, it will be a lot sorer soon. Is sorer a word? Why am I asking you? You are a savage, and your German is hideous. Anyway, as I was saying…. My apologies, what was I saying?”

He was enjoying this. I was still mulling over his comment about my shoulder, which I didn’t like at all. I said nothing, so he continued, “He
had
to be told. But when one is a young man and in love, these things—”

“Tell me what this is about and stop pissing around.”

He winced and dabbed his mouth, but I could tell he was amused. “You have been a naughty boy, Niko, playing with another naughty boy, and we
had
to tell Aleksey. He is very upset, poor boy. I think he loves you!”

I snarled and tried to reach him again. “What have you done? Who? This is all shit. Let me speak to him!”

“Why would I do that when I have gone to all this trouble to isolate you and keep you apart from him? And he would not see you now, even if he could save you from your fate. Which, of course, he can’t—as he signed the law himself.” He giggled. God help me, a grown man giggled. “He is so angry with you. I
wish
you could see it.”

“You are pathetic. Is this the best you can come up with? He would not believe you, even if you showed him proof. Who have you paid off to tell these lies?”

“Why no one, you fool. That is the beauty of it all. I just had to confess, you see. It was preying on my mind, given how we have been betraying my dearest nephew, he being my
king
…. So I went to my brother, the cardinal, confessed all our dalliances, and have been given absolution. I was very believable; trust me. But then… I’ve
imagined
us fucking so many times that I actually believed it myself.”

I felt a chill wash over me but then a sense of utter elation. “
You
! You? You’re the
fool
! Aleksey would
never
believe I would betray him with
you
! I
detest
you. You make me feel sick when I—”

“Then perhaps you should not have left your shirt in my bed, Niko.” I’d angered him by my rant, and now he’d taken very effective revenge.

I licked my lips. “Let me speak to Aleksey.”

He dabbed his nose once more, and I made a vow to myself there and then that if I ever got out of this cell, I would cut that nose off and wear it slung from Xavier’s bridle. His hair was thinning and would not make much of an adornment, but I would take that off too. Of course it was all very well making such vows when imprisoned and helpless. They would come to nothing and only roused the blood to self-harm, as I did that night, punching the walls until my knuckles bled. I did not know if Aleksey would believe this lie or not.

I wavered unpleasantly between two alternatives: he did believe it and had forsaken me; he did not believe it but was as helpless to save me as he had been to change the law. After all, I
was
guilty of sodomy—only not with John. And that was the perfection of their scheme. To prove beyond doubt I had not been in John’s bed, Aleksey would have to admit whose bed I had been in. To be a credible witness, Aleksey would have to implicate himself. He too would have to be imprisoned for his perversion, and he too would face death. After all, he had signed the law. So perhaps he did know it was a lie but was too afraid to help me. Not
helpless
to save me but too afraid to try. That was my third alternative and the one I tried not to listen to. But that was not Aleksey. He was fearless in all things and followed his own inner voice to the detriment of his own safety, as I had witnessed many times already. He would
not
forsake me. So that left the only alternative: he believed them.