The White Cross (11 page)

‘Nor hit the target truly neither, the precious awks, without a woman’s hand to set them in the way.’ Hod pops a sugured violet in my mouth to make my breath smell sweet,

‘But don’t keep him waiting for too long dear,’ is Maman’s next advice. ‘Men can be generous enough and kind. But not when they’re denied.’

Hod’s sponged and scented me with lily water. She’s used carnation on my cheeks and lips, and even on the soft skin of my belly. I’d like to wriggle down in bed. But that would never do, because I have to be propped up on pillows while they spread my hair around me like a halo. The bolster smells of lavender and starch, has parsnip seeds pressed underneath it for fruitful union – and I can’t move my head for fear of ruining the look.

‘You look quite beautiful, my treasure.’

The pride in Maman’s voice is touching, until she spoils it with another caution. ‘’Tis best to leave your hair unbraided for the honey-month,’ is what she recommends. ‘It helps the man to think you maidenly each time he comes to bed – a virgin fresh and whole, you see, for him to conquer every night.’

But now at last it’s over – all the fussing, tweaking and instruction – and they’re leaving. Maman’s pinching out the candles…

‘I say the devil has the right of it, a woman looks as well undressed by firelight as in the costliest attire. Try not to think too much, my dear, it makes you frown and that’s so unattractive. And while you’re waiting it would do no harm to say a rosary.’

Her very last advice – ‘Or if there’s time, a prayer to Margaret of Antioch who blesses all our bellies.’

Hoddie’s trying to tiptoe away on feet three times too large to manage it. Her chin recedes. She’s dewlapped like a bloodhound. But her grim smile as they pass through the chamber door tugs at my heartstrings.

So I’m alone and shivering despite the fire – interlacing fingers, wriggling my toes and sucking on the violet muscadin. It’s been a strange, momentous day, and nothing stranger than this moment, now.

Afraid? I know I must be because my heart is beating on my ribs like something in a cage! There’s no escape, nowhere to hide – what’s been a game before now all too real.

What can I do that’s calming? ‘Ave Maria gratia plena… Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee…’

The glass beads of the rosary are something to hold onto. Above the beam that ties its outer walls there’s nothing but a film of cobwebs to separate us from the men. They’re laughing out there. Someone’s playing bagpipes. The fire has been attended to and has a good red heart, its flames embracing seasoned wood, gleaming on the bedposts. Dancing on the wall.

Silence now beyond the beam. But there’s the latch. He’s coming in! ‘Sancta Maria, mater Dei…’ Surely your Joseph was a gentle sort of man who wouldn’t treat a woman ill?

Holy Saint Margaret, please help me do it right…’

‘Knees up little lady! Best way to say yer prayers tonight,’ a drunken voice cries through the open door. ‘Give thanks for what ye will receive ’afore ye taste the flavour!’

Low comedy which isn’t funny, not at all (although what about the knees? I wish when Garda listed all the ways she’s tried it, I’d paid her more attention.)

Will he speak first? Or shall I do it? Surely anything is better than a silence?

The hinges creak. The door latch drops a second time. He’s shooting the top bolt, and now the other…

Time to set the rosary aside. ‘Dear God, defend me with Thy mighty power, and remind him if You will, that I’m an untried virgin.

So eyes tight shut and all my other senses straining…

Can he see how my hair’s spread on the pillow? I hope that Maman’s right about the firelight. But now I wish I hadn’t closed my eyes – because I can’t see WHAT HE’S DOING!

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was difficult to see what I was doing when I’d shut the door and shot the bolts. But of course I knew what was expected, knew I had to do my duty as a husband before I came to open it again, to prove myself a natural man in the most obvious way on earth.

I felt excited, agitated, hot as hades, cold as Ice. No one, I told myself with one hand underneath my robe, would call me ‘soft-sword’
– least of all my wife.

I found her in the bed where I was born, eyes closed, hair rippling across the pillows like ripe corn in the breeze. I knew she couldn’t be asleep because behind me Martin Reeve was either torturing an jackass or playing something on his bagpipes.

Then Jos began to sing about the law of cock and how it goes. ‘Take it as a truth from one who knows. The more we use the thing the more it grows!’

A burst of laughter followed, along with all the usual hints for threading needles, planting roots and imitating randy livestock. That’s how it is at weddings. All brides the same. All waiting for a husbandman, or bull, or ram to fuck them. That’s how it was with us. And as she waited for me with her eyes closed, my new wife must have seen herself as I did. As a ready cunt.

OW! OW! OW! Garda told me it would hurt the first time – and it DOES! So thick and hot it burns like fire!

But Garda didn’t say how HEAVY he would be, how far he’d ram that alien thing inside me – jarring, pounding, crushing me into the mattress, forcing my legs wider with each furious thrust! He didn’t ask me, hardly even spoke. He just looked baffled for a moment, then made a frantic dive to sieze me like some kind of animal. I swore I wouldn’t scream or cry – eyes on the canopy above us, mouth tight, tight shut. But I can’t BREATHE! No air! Can’t take the weight! His fingers hurt – tight round my neck as if he thinks I might escape. I have to STOP HIM! Have to try to heave him off before…

‘Ahh-aaa-oo-aaaah!!!’

Convulsion. Yeasty, beery breath gusting from his lungs into my face. And someone cheering, chanting something lewd about Jack and planting orchards – more cheers. More catcalls, drunken laughter…

But thank the Lord, he’s off me – hot and slimy and SO WET!

It’s all SO VERY WET AND MESSY! I know that this is not the time for squeamishness. But Jésu, what a stink! (And who’d have thought that it would smell of ivy pollen, and so strongly?) And what a clumsy, painful, messy sort of business altogether! I didn’t even feel it spurt as I expected, only heard the fuss he made.

So is this IT? Is THIS the thing men boast and sing about so endlessly? Because if it is, it’s going to take a lot of getting used to – that’s all that I can say! He’s dribbled on me and there’s blood – down here and on my fingers where I’ve touched it…

But oh dear, a sudden picture’s flashed into my mind of Everlasting God with grey hair and a long grey beard, peering through the clouds to see me flattened and spread-eagled, sticky with Sir Garon’s seed! God speaking in my father’s sternest tones.

‘I TOLD YOU NOT TO EAT THE APPLE, TOLD YOU IT WAS BITTER TO THE TASTE! BUT THEN YOU HAD TO HAVE IT DIDN’T YOU, MY FOOLISH CHILD. AND NOW SEE WHAT IT’S BROUGHT YOU!’

I hear The Everlasting’s voice. But not Sir Garon’s, not a peep. Only pants and groans, a huge yawn and a series of deep breaths – because, I wish he wasn’t but he’s already snoring like a hedge-pig – fast asleep!

While I am bound to lie here wide-awake for simply hours!

Muffled birdsong, distant cock-crow, dawn light through the window, ashes in the hearth. So here are we a married couple, and joined last night by rather more than hands and vows!

See here’s a bloodstain on my shift, another on the sheet. Maman will be gratified to see them, and that’s something I suppose. Anyway the worst is over and I didn’t cry aloud. And there he lies, my untamed ravisher, flat on his back across the ruin of our bed – a Samson shorn, a naked man asleep – eyes shut, chin sticking up, mouth open, snoring still ’though not so loud. We make our faces work so hard to tell our stories while we are awake, and look so different when we aren’t. It’s true. He looks much better doesn’t he without the shifty eyes.

The cat-fur’s on the floor, the over-sheet bunched up across one thigh and twisted round his foot. Those arms and hands – last night they felt like iron bars! He has big knuckles and broad fingers, a hairy crucifix imprinted on his chest – yellow bruises, traces of old scars, outlines of bones beneath the skin and two red fleabites on his neck…

So long as he’s asleep I have him to myself, to smooth his hair if I so choose. To feel the ragged edge of his sliced ear. And yes Elise, admit it – to take a good long look at what he has down there while you still have the chance!

It isn’t that I’ve never seen one. But glimpses of pink sprouts in hair – of men on hot days in the water, or pissing against tree-trunks – can hardly count as decent views. Well, can they? In chansons the male member is a force of life, battling with death to fountain seed into the world. In verse it is the mythic horn – the unicorn that’s bound to women by a golden chain.

But now I can look his fiery engine in the eye, I can’t say that I find it all that wonderfully impressive. What does it remind me of – shrunken, limply wrinkled, lolling drunkenly across a shiny slime-trail on his thigh? Much lesss a unicorn I’d say than a defenceless turtle squab hatched out of hairy eggs! And puny actually, beside a horse’s or a mule’s. No honestly, it doesn’t seem to go with any other part of him, looks added on somehow, and strange for something quite so commonplace and universal. I mean all men must have one…

But I’ve just thought, if God made men in His Own Image, He must have one too! (Stop it you wicked girl – that’s more than quite enough! But the Everlasting with a pizzle. What a fantasic thought!)

I know I shouldn’t smile, but it’s so silly, all of it – the legendary unicorn, the songs men sing obsessively about their own peculiar bodies, and in the end the unimpressive thing itself. To look at it you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt – the only mystery how men can ever hope to be taken seriously with that arrangement dangling between their legs or standing up and sticking out in front…

But Holy Godfathers, HE IS AWAKE!!

It’s said the way you feel when you awake from your first engagement with a woman is like to set the pattern for your future with her, and if that’s true it didn’t bode too well for ours!

I’d seen her smile before I quite remembered where I was. And when I did, and caught her smirking at my cock, my confidence was shattered.

The night before, I’d acted as I thought no worse than any man confronted by a virgin bride. Squared my shoulders. Boldly pulled the sheet aside, and muttering ‘
Victoire’
beneath my breath, lifted her shift to bare the target and make my charge against its maiden shield. No sense, I thought, in wasting time or looking doubtful. She’d flinched a bit and cried a little afterwards as I’d been told she would. But by then I’d dropped into the blameless sleep of any fellow who’s successfully performed his matress-duty.

At dawn I’d planned another onslaught, knowing they expected me to do it twice at least within the first hours of her breeding cycle. And ’though I’d wilted sometime in the night, to wake as limp as a slit pilchard I would have risen to the task and willingly.

I would have done. I’m sure I would. But for the girl’s unnerving smile.

‘I can explain,’ she said. But when she tried she only made things worse. I can’t recall the words she used to make me think that she admired my body. I wasn’t in a frame to listen. Instead I broke all records for jumping out of bed and dressing, stumbled on the hutch beside the bed and stubbed my toe, but didn’t care and wouldn’t stop not even for an instant. With boots in hand I freed the chamber door and bolted through it.

The lamps had guttered in the dormitory beyond. The place smelt comfortably of sleepers and stale beer. The shutters were still open and the pale dawn light revealed the form of Martin Reeve, snoring hoarsely, hugging his bagpipes to him like a lover. Others sprawled or hunched into their cloaks, if not unconscious next thing to it. All but one.

‘My lord?’ A tussocky red head, a shine of eyes reminded me that I could seldom move however stealthily without attention from my squire. But I told Jos to go back to his sleep, that I’d take Bruno in his place, and saw his mop-headed shadow slip down the wall.

Beyond the outer door an open stairway led into the manor ward, and I’d barely time to stamp into my boots before my dog came bounding up it. A half-grown pup who’d unaccountably attached himself to me since my return, he licked my hand and squirmed for my approval with every part of his uncleanly body wagging. I called him Bruno for his colour, but might have called him Pongo for his smell. We looked about us sniffing the raw morning, scenting pigs and cowpats, straw and stables through the stink of fox-shit coating Bruno’s ears. The grooms were out already leading horses to their tethers. I stopped to piss into an elder by the gate and Bruno did the same. Between the grass stems spiders’ webs were strung like rosaries with beads of dew, and the sky out to the east was washed with yellow.

Our corn was harvested and safely in. The manor barn cram-full of hay and barley. Wheat and rye stooks ready for the threshing. There were fat pigeons in the cotes and coneys in the warrens, the fowls were laying and the cattle flush with milk. Our manor fields were tended. Cottage gardens overflowed with kale and leeks, the mill and sawmill, smithy, brewery and the bakehouse all functioned as they should. In short, the domain prospered as I’d known it prosper in my mother’s care all through my childhood and my years of training at the fortress and on every visit since.