by Sarah Bower
Not a word, he would yell, not a bloody, fucking word, even when he sent her a direct enquiry. His worst enemy would treat him with greater courtesy. Who does she think she is? Just a whore, replied the moon, just a cunt to poke like any other. One of a kind, argued the moon’s reflection in the marsh, misted and pierced by spikes of grass. Precious, unique, remember her lips, that stern arch of her brows, her breasts, her little waist, remember her tongue, agile as a good sword in the hands of a master. Tread carefully as the prince hunting the sleeping beauty in her citadel of briars.
Even now, he does not know how she will react, but he can no longer help himself. He must have her whatever the cost, yet he is as gauche as the boy who fathered John with Adeliza. His hands refuse to work properly. They shake and fumble as though his brain can no longer control them. He tears at her clothes, the drab tunic, the plain linen shift, the underthings Agatha insists on for the women. At some point she trips, over her hose, over the edge of a rug, who knows, and falls, hitting the side of her head on the bath, but neither of them notices. He drops to his knees in front of her, the towel slipping from his hips, pinning her to the floor with one hand against her breastbone, pushing her legs apart with the other. Touches her heart’s dance, the skin high up the insides of her thighs almost too soft to feel.
Everything is going wrong. If this is the price of his compassion for Alwys, then she is better equipped to pay it than any of the other women, but there is no call on her to enjoy it, no reason why her body should respond as it does, opening, sucking, salivating at the taste and feel of him, forgetting even to breathe as she drinks him in. Her fingernails do not try to claw him away, but dig into his back, pressing him closer, branding him. Her legs entwine themselves around his waist, pulling him down into her with a violence that makes him cry out. Incomprehensibly, in his own language, with an intensity that makes her open her eyes to see him looking at her, his gaze sweet with lust, but mixed with something unexpected.
She had thought to see her own hunger reflected there, but she sees something else as well. A withholding, an apprehension, a terror even. Remembering the mistress of his dream, she smiles a little. Then frowns as he drives deeper inside her, tearing her open as Adam did, except that what he penetrates is not some token membrane but the door to her heart.
Her frown is the sweetest, most poignant thing, a sudden drawing together of her fine, dark brows to some point of introspection he longs to reach. He wants, needs to hurt her. Fucking her, he is punishing the other men. With every thrust into her he slays one of them, her husband, the sower in stony ground, the men who paid her, sowers by the wayside. His passion will make her fertile; he will give her children who live, make her happy, make her his. His. Possessio mea. How he will love her.
At the end of the line of men awaiting the little martyrdom is himself. Father, son, unruly spirit, emptied into her.
She relaxes her grasp on him a little, but only a little, and turns her face into the hot, damp skin of his neck. She does not think she can bear to have him any further from her than this, resting now inside her as his breathing slows down and his heart reclaims its normal rhythm, separated from her by nothing more than a slick of sweat.
“D’you think Aristophanes is right?” she mutters. Absorbed in the physical sensation of her breath stirring the tiny hairs on his skin, the words do not immediately make sense to him; even after his brain has sorted them out, they make very little sense to him. Lifting himself on his elbows, he smiles down at her, marvelling at how lovely she is, with her dark hair spread out around her flushed cheeks and the way her breasts lie like tears of flesh, slightly to her sides.
“Aristophanes?”
“Yes. The theory of perfect wholes.”
He is moved, not so much by her sentiment as by the way she has got it wrong. He loves the way she knows halves and parts and fragments of things, as though her mind is like a block of stone, waiting for the sculptor to free its images. One day he will tell her it was Plato, turning aside from his pursuit of love’s final mysteries to enjoy a joke, who put the words into the mouth of Aristophanes, and that Plato is now known only by Apuleius’ translation, and how sad it is, how frustrating, to be able to feel the living pulse of the Greek inside the Latin and yet have no means of freeing it. Though perhaps there may be something in the notion that lovers bound in perfect communion can challenge even the power of God.
He hugs her close, cupping one hand behind her head, her hair slipping like water through his fingers, then shivers. The room has grown cold, the darkness now almost total beyond the window shutters and the brazier burned down for lack of attention. He can feel gooseflesh creeping up his back and his wrist beginning to ache.
“Let’s get into bed.” He rolls off her and stands up.
It is then he notices the blood on his genitals. He looks at her in panic, in the same second that she sees him, sits up and stares at her own thighs similarly smeared with whorls and contours of blood.
“Is it your time?”
“No.”
No, of course not, he would have noticed. “Don’t move.” He fishes in the tepid bath water for a wash-cloth and cleans himself, quickly establishing that it is not he who has sustained any injury. Wrapping himself in his dressing gown, which he finds on a chair beside the bath, he takes the cloth and kneels in front of her. Parting her legs gently, his fingertips butterfly kisses on the tender skin inside her thighs, he mops away her blood and his semen, realising that the combination makes the carnage look worse than it is. She has the languid look of a rose about to drop, her lips swollen, tendrils of hair stuck to her forehead and temples, eyes dreaming beneath half closed lids.
“It’s cold, I’m sorry,” he says, stroking the cloth over her thighs and the tight, matted curls of her private hair and all the precious, secret, hidden parts of her. “Oh dear God, what have I done to you? Are you in any pain?”
She feels no pain, only a syrupy heaviness, a vestigial trace of him inside her, the working of his fingers beneath the cloth. “I’m all right. I’m sure it’s nothing. I feel…” She gives him a wise smile. “Wonderful.” He tosses the cloth back into the bath but remains kneeling in front of her like a penitent, his stricken gaze taking in her torn clothes and the bruise beginning to swell like a storm cloud on her temple, hers fixed mischievously on the renewed stirring of his sex, which she encourages by stroking him with the tips of her toes.
“You must rest,” he says, slightly anguished, moving out of reach of her foot, “and I shall have the physician sent for.”
“No, I don’t need a doctor.”
“But someone must attend you.”
“Freya, then,” she says, lying back with her arms folded behind her head, gazing up at the ceiling whose beams are decorated with the ubiquitous green and gold chevrons. “Sister Jean’s new servant. She has some knowledge.”
He raises his eyebrows at this, but lets it pass. “All right, I’ll have Osbern send someone to fetch her. Can you stand?”
“Of course I can,” but, weak with wanting him again, she has to let him take her weight. Her legs buckle like those of something newborn, the distance to his bed seems immeasurable. She leans against him as he pulls back the bed curtains, lazily admiring the deep blue damask, yellow-lined, embroidered in gold with moons and stars, the signs of the zodiac and feather-tailed comets. He lifts her, holding her against his heart, her cheek branded by the brocading on his gown. She feels her own smallness, her lightness, how nearly nothing she is.
“It’ll make you sneeze,” he says of the arctic fox coverlet on his bed, the colour of newly skimmed cream.
She laughs. “No, it’s only living things, not dead fur. Cats and dogs and so on.”
“Ah.” He lays her on the high bed and tucks the bedclothes around her with all the tender solicitude of a child’s nurse.
Then he tells her he must dress and go to hall, where a bevy of clergy are waiting to dine with him and submit a dispute over land title to
his adjudication, a complicated matter, he explains, trying to look apologetic, involving liability for repairs to a grange and the translation of relics of a saint whose name he cannot remember. He is sorry, really sorry, he says, sitting down on the bed and kissing her bruised temple, but it will probably be late before his business is concluded. She pouts, runs a teasing finger along his collarbones and around the tight circles of his nipples, but she can see from the slight crinkling of the skin at the corners of his eyes how much he is looking forward to the argument.
“Osbern,” he shouts before she has a chance to protest that she is content, has no need of company, would, in fact, appreciate a little time alone before Freya is sent for. She thinks about her blood, darkening the gold brown hair where his penis now nestles demurely. What has he done to her? What has given way inside her after so many years?
Osbern appears, silently and promptly, from the other side of the arras.
“My lord?”
“I must get dressed, Osbern. And,” waving his hand in a gesture designed to take in the bath full of cold water, the torn clothes and bloodied rug, the woman in the bed, “sort all this out, will you? Oh, and Osbern, keep the dogs out.”
Gytha, enfolded in the vast warm space of Odo’s bed, cosseted by his feather mattress and pillows soft as clouds, the piles of quilts, the fox fur coverlet pulled up to her chin, nevertheless watches Osbern at work with the close interest of a fellow professional. She notes with approval, and not a little admiration, the way he never looks at her, behaves, indeed, as though she cannot possibly be there. He must notice her teeth marks in Odo’s shoulder, the scratches on his back, but if he does, nothing in his demeanour shows it. Perhaps it is not unusual. She recognises, with a pang of nostalgia for her own former life, the comfortable intimacy which exists between lord and man, born of the years that Osbern has been about his master’s person, far more years than she was granted with her beloved Lady Edith.
Her eyes follow Odo, sitting, standing, turning himself about in Osbern’s competent hands, his mind no doubt running on how best to settle the dispute to be laid before him, running, perhaps, a little on her. As Osbern smoothes the plum coloured chausses over his master’s calves, pulls his shirt over his head, laces his crimson tunic, buckles his girdle, and lifts the stiff, brocaded surcoat onto his shoulders, she understands that this relationship has a closeness, a depth of physical intimacy that a man in Odo’s position can achieve with no one else, not even a wife were he permitted one.
She feels the prick of foolish tears behind her eyes but cannot turn away, captivated by every move of her lover’s body, her concentration so focused on him that she can sense how his clothes feel against his skin, the warmth of fine wool, the linen crisp and cool, the sudden, sharp scraping when Osbern accidentally draws the comb over the tonsured part of his scalp. It is the only mistake Osbern makes and, although not punished, it is not overlooked, eliciting from Odo a sharp hiss of pain before he waves the comb away and holds out his wrists for the pair of wide gold cuffs set with red amber he has chosen to complete his adornment. The cuffs shimmer through her tears, their clasps lock, one after the other, fat, well-oiled clicks.
Finally Odo himself selects a crucifix from a stamped leather jewel case on his dressing table, a lavish affair of gold set with garnets to represent Christ’s wounds and a crown of tiny jet thorns. He kisses the crucifix and hangs it, on its ruby studded chain, around his neck, then goes to his prie dieu where he kneels in silent prayer for several minutes. Osbern moves quietly about the room, cleaning razors, folding clothes, shutting chests and boxes and comb cases, stoppering crystal bottles. As though, thinks Gytha, their perfumes are like exotic wild animals, rare and dangerous. He bundles up discarded clothing and wet towels and stokes the brazier, normally jobs for lesser servants, or the smallest pages, but these are unusual circumstances and gossip, like fire, is only a comfort until it runs out of control.
Gytha watches Odo, thinking he himself is a prayer, her prayer, with the soles of his shoes so neatly together and his hair curling into a drake’s tail at the nape of his neck and his body so straight and strong, bearing the stigmata of her teeth beneath all the layers of linen and wool and gold embroidery.
He finishes his prayers and comes to sit beside her on the bed, taking one of her hands between both of his. She turns on her side and curls up with her knees under the bedclothes pressed against his thigh.
“Tell me what you pray for.”
He looks reflective, does not answer immediately, so she is afraid she has overstepped some boundary she was unaware of, then says, “That God will remind me of the name of this saint whose relics we have to discuss, before it becomes clear to everyone that I don’t know it. You seem to have a saint under every bush in this country.”
“Oh, we are very holy people, my lord.”
“So why did I lately come upon a shrine to a Saint Venus? Can you unravel that puzzle for me?”
“I could, my lord, but you have to go down to dinner.” She gives a laugh like the splash of water, deep underground. He kisses her, chastely, on her forehead, because if he kisses her laughing mouth he knows he will not go. “Osbern will take care of you, and Saint Odo, and Freya, of course. And later, perhaps we can pray to Saint Venus together. Promise me you won’t try to get up.” He rises, Osbern hovering at his back with a clothes brush. “Oh, and Gytha, my sweetheart,” he says, as though it is an afterthought, “I never said Alwys had to go, just that my sister had my leave to find a replacement for her as an embroiderer. It’s all a matter of interpretation.”
***
Now he has gone, she tries to be angry, but she feels too weak. There is not enough room inside her for anger, yet he has cheated her, no, worse, outwitted her. She will leave, but she has no clothes. All the women have a spare set of everything; she will ask Osbern to fetch hers, but she does not know how. Osbern, by ignoring her so completely, even the imprint of her teeth in his master’s flesh, has made her uncertain she exists for him at all. Perhaps she cannot speak to him, her voice will not work, or her words will come out jumbled into nonsense, or he will simply be unable to hear her. She and Osbern, each in a separate sphere of Odo’s life, speaking different languages, each condemned to a fixed orbit, unless he chooses to lift them out of it. Everything comes back to Odo, and the cycle of rage and rebuttal begins again.
She will get up, borrow his clothes if need be. God knows, he seems to have enough of them. In her idle inventory of his room she has counted at least half a dozen clothes chests, all exhaling clouds of camphor and lavender. She will go back to the atelier, and tomorrow she will continue work on her fables. Yet how can she? How can she simply walk into the women’s dormitory as if nothing has happened, as if her body is not pierced by his as clearly as the linen stretched on the embroidery frames is pierced by his memories. Besides, his bed is warm and comfortable, holding the template of his sleeping self in all its folds and feathers, and she isn’t confident the bleeding has stopped completely. He is right; she should rest, allow herself to be taken care of.
***
She must have slept, for when she opens her eyes the clutter of objects in the room is lost in shadow, only a pool of light from a single candle on the nightstand showing her the figure of Freya, her back protectively curved as she offers her breast to one of the babies. Gytha does not look long enough to identify which, although even with her eyes squeezed shut she cannot now deny the soft, wet sucking of the child’s mouth on Freya’s nipple, nor the smell of milk resting uneasily in the air of this room which, for all its opulence, is a man’s room. Her body responds as though caressed by ghosts, her nipples harden and her womb clenches, repeating their unfinished catechism. She turns away from Freya, drawing her knees up to her chest, making herself into the smallest possible target for grief.
She aches for Odo, with a rush of elation that he is flesh and blood, sweat and substance, divided from her only by the floor of this room; if she listens carefully, she c
an probably distinguish his voice from among the babble drifting up from the hall below. Missing him is in time, not eternity.
“Are you awake?” asks Freya, shifting the baby to her other breast. Gytha opens her eyes and turns reluctantly back toward her. It’s Freya’s baby, she thinks, Freya’s little daughter.
“Can I get you something? Water? Something to eat? The manservant said to ask.” She looks around the room. “No shortage of anything, is there? Makes you wonder what he wanted with my few bits and pieces. It’s the second time it’s happened to me, you know. My family came from York originally. Fled down south after the harrying. You’ve never seen so much of…nothing, after the Bastard finished with us. He even had all the farm animals slaughtered, far more than they needed to eat, and just left them to rot in the fields.”
Gytha makes no reply, and Freya considers her thoughtfully. “The page said you’d been taken ill. When I came…I met the earl on the stairs. He said you’d asked for me specially. He said…He looked…” she gropes for the right word, “panicky,” she concludes with satisfaction.
Gytha smiles. “He was all for summoning his physician, as if I hadn’t lost enough blood for one day.”
Freya looks up sharply at this and Thecla, sensing her mother’s distraction, grizzles a little. “I hope he would not bleed you for women’s troubles in this month. It can only be done with the sun in Scorpio.”
“That’s why I asked for you. I was sure you would know what to do. I remember how you took care of Leofgeat and the baby.”
She tells Freya everything. Freya listens attentively, nodding from time to time, sighing occasionally when Gytha struggles for words to reduce this act of love and wonder and violence to a medical conundrum. Chastened, Gytha tries to see herself as Freya must see her, as a puzzle, a set of physical organs to be defended against the effects of emotional chaos, and begins again. When she stumbles to the end of her account, Freya lays the baby down on the end of the bed, straightens her clothes, and folds back the covers to examine Gytha. Thecla sneezes as she turns her head toward her mother and the fur tickles her nose. Freya laughs besottedly, but stops when she sees Gytha’s face. Gytha longs to say it’s all right, but it isn’t, so she says nothing.
