by Smith, Skye
"Yes, but sometimes it hurts down in the balls."
"Mine has not since,” Malcolm blurted out. "It pees fine, but nothing more. That is a secret, swear it."
"I swear it, but so what. I have had Margaret's sons sitting on this, the bed of your eldest son. "
"So what, so what. Margaret is lusty. You know that. You were her first lover. Her only lover other than me. She is lusty for my cock because she swears she will not stop pumping babies until she has at least one daughter."
"It will come back,” Raynar said soothingly.
"Six weeks, and not a stirring. And believe me I have tried. They must have crushed my balls or some other organ, that has not healed."
"Come closer, let me look,” Raynar commanded. "Oh for heavens sake, Malcolm, do I look like a priest that would take pleasure in touching you. Bring it here and then close your eyes if it bothers you to watch me. And I don't want to hear anything except the description of any pain or strange feelings."
Raynar prodded and poked and felt and stroked and held the King of the Scots. There was a scratch at the door and he yelled at whoever it was to come back in a half an hour. Eventually he said. "You have two injuries that hamper you, not one. As you suspected, your balls have been crushed. That means your seed will probably not survive in a woman. Also you have a blockage of blood getting to the cock. That means it cannot grow larger. Here, put your thumb there."
He put Malcolm’s thumb on the topside base of his penis. "By pressing there, you block most blood from leaving your cock. That means it should grow with each pump of your heart. That it doesn't mean that the arteries that carry the blood to your cock are blocked or broken. I'm sorry, there is nothing I can do to solve these problems. You have been cursed doubly. You are not only infertile, but you cannot even feel the pleasure of using your cock."
Malcolm was silent. Raynar smiled at him. "The good news is that you lived, so now you can do the same and worse back to Walcher."
"I will burn him like the poor widows he enjoys burning as witches.” cursed Malcolm. He then looked at Raynar. "So you can still get it up, but are you fertile?"
"Believe me, as soon as I gained my senses back I was doing that self same prodding on myself. I should be still fertile."
There was another scratch at the door. Malcolm turned to it and bellowed "Go away” and then turned back to Raynar. "Raynar, while Margaret is nursing you back to health, give her a daughter. Give Margaret a daughter."
"What"
"Shit man, I have heard all the stories about you from my wife. You've had her before. You have saved her life more than once. If not for you she would not be here in Scotland. I would far rather you be bedding her than some stable boy. Moreover, you have a life elsewhere, so you will eventually leave, no matter how much she pleads with you to stay."
"But what if it becomes known that you cannot get it up. What then."
"Who will ever know. Who will ever tell. It looks fine when I pee. I still grab at women's tits. But wait, there is a companion worry. If it is ever know that you were in my wife's bed, I would be honour bound to kill you."
"For your plan to work, Margaret would have to be told, asked, asked permission of."
"Leave that to me. She is my wife."
An impatient, frustrated, worried Margaret barged through the door. The sight that filled her eyes, made her kick the door closed before anyone else could peer through it. There was her naked husband standing facing her naked one time lover who was sitting on a bed and holding her husbands penis.
Raynar took one glance at the shock and disbelief written on her face and rushed to say "This is not how it must look to you. I was just, ugh, seeing if I could help him. Oh, that doesn't sound good either."
"We were comparing bruises,” tried Malcolm, "they have the same pattern. I told him of my, ugh, our, ugh my problem, and he was checking me.” Then he began to laugh because Margaret had begun to laugh, and then Raynar was laughing and moaning simultaneously because it hurt him so much to laugh.
"No stop. That is cruel,” complained Raynar, choking down his laughter, "Oh please stop before we start belly laughing."
"While we were comparing the damage that was done to each of us I made a decision,” said Malcolm trying to look serious. "I want Raynar to give you a daughter."
"And what did Raynar say,” asked Margaret now staring hard from one to the other of these men.
Malcolm was opening his mouth to tell her the truth, but Raynar spoke to drown out his words. "I told him that as soon as we hugged for the first time, I had decided to seduce you."
Malcolm raised his eyebrows at him, and then winked at him in understanding. "But not here. Not in this palace. Not around my men. No one else must know.” He now had his wife in his arms and she was kissing him.
She pushed away from her husband and looked into his eyes. "This is very generous of you. We will wait for a week, until Raynar heals more. It will give you time to change your mind. Whatever you decide I will abide by.” She looked towards Raynar. "Agreed.” He nodded. "Now both of you put some clothes on so I can open the door. There is food and ale waiting,” she pause "or would you rather eat in the great hall with the courtiers?"
Raynar wrapped himself in the bed linen. Malcolm pulled on his clothes and while doing so answered, "I have no interest at sitting at fine tables with milksops. The men I should be eating with are right now gathered around their fires eating venison off the spit and telling man stories. Three days ago I was doing just that when the Nesbit clan rode in with a hundred spare horses, and a tale about Raynar here."
"They are quite the clan,” Raynar nodded.
"Real men. Reivers. I told Gregor that the next time he found you half dead and surrounded by nuns, to leave you there."
"And what did Gregor say to that."
"That he would have left you this time, but he was scared by the size of your sword, and that leaving you meant raping the ugliest nun he had ever met.” Malcolm smoothed his clothes. "Have the food brought in, love."
"I will not.” Margaret replied. "Raynar is up now. He can walk as far as the table in our quarters."
* * * * *
"So you were the one that shot the Conqueror?” Malcolm asked for confirmation of what he had just been told by Cristina. Margaret was off saying good night to her children.
"I did,” replied Raynar, "it went through his hand, and pinned his hand to his side in the lower chest. If the priests and the physicians keep the healers away from him, then it is a wound that may never heal."
"That explains much. Norman warriors have been drained from England to Normandy because of his losses there, and now Norman lords are leaving to be beside their king's bed."
"And why are you not taking good advantage?” asked Raynar. "Gregor told me that your army is camped well north of the border."
Malcolm pointed to his lower back. "We were on the move when this happened. The commanders refused to move until they were sure I was not going to die. And I am not taking advantage. I have unsettled land claims in Bernicia from Earls Cospatrick and Waltheof, both of whom are now dead. Bishop Walcher is refusing my claims. He wants those lands for himself."
"And Waltheof's lands, would those be the ones passed from his father Siward, or the honors he gained from William."
"From Siward of course. Honors given by a king can be taken back by a king,” replied Malcolm grumpily.
"Then this may be of interest,” he dropped a scroll out of his pipe and handed it to Malcolm. Malcolm immediately passed it to Cristina to read for him.
Christina read it to herself first, and then thought about it before she summarized it to Malcolm. "Waltheof's widow is Judith of Lens, the Countess of Huntingdon. Raynar, has she been reinstated?” at Raynar's nod she continued, "She has appointed Raynar her chief steward in all matters pertaining to her lands from Derby north."
Malcolm sat up and a grin slowly widened until it filled his face. "Then I have him. I have Walcher by the
balls and I don't have to fight him."
"Hold,” said Raynar, "I was appointed her steward in good faith and so I must act. Anything I do must benefit Judith or her tenants."
"Oh, it will, it will, for if you help me to wrest Bernicia from Walcher, then I will confirm all of Siward's lands in Scotland to Judith. She will be the richest widow in Christendom."
"The life of a rich widow in England is perilous. It was only through Robert of Normandy, her, ugh, friend and cousin, that she was able to squirm out from under an onerous betrothal. My own beating was due to my rescue of an English widow from the clutches of a Norman knight."
"Bah, there has always been a cure for a widow's problems. I will find a good husband for her,” said Malcolm, waving such nonsense away with his hand.
Cristina rolled up the scroll carefully and retied it, and handed it back to Raynar before she equally calmly kicked Malcolm under the table. "If that was a jest, it was in poor taste."
"Cristina, dear,” said Malcolm, "no matter your thoughts on the subject, and the gods know how many times I have listened to them, a woman alone is at risk, and a wealthy woman alone is a target. That is real life. That is the way it is. I did not make it so, and I cannot change it."
"Judith will not marry again.” said Raynar while watching Cristina's handsome face. "She has told me so many times. She was refused betrothal to the man she wanted, and still is. She was married against her will to Waltheof who though young and handsome, was a brute with women. She fled England and had her honors stripped from her for refusing a new husband chosen by her uncle William. Now William's court, or rather Matilda's, has offered a solution that will keep her a widow forever. She is content."
"Keep asking her,” replied Cristina. "and at times other than when you want into her, ugh, bed."
"Bah, under English law, under my law, we have been married for two years already. It is not accepted by the Romanized church or by the Norman court."
"But under in-common law,” argued Cristina, "there is no such thing as marriage for life, and no such thing as bigamy. Every woman in a port on the North Sea has more than one husband, and every oarsman has more than one wife. It is different with the Roman church and the nobles."
"Only because the underlying issue with them is land ownership. If there were no land ownership, if all land was communal, then there would be no such strict rules on betrothal and inheritance."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - Queens and Widows by Skye Smith
Chapter 12 - Romance at Loch Fitty, Scotland in May 1079
The day that Malcolm took his leave of Margaret to return south to his army, Margaret and Raynar traveled north by way of the small hunting lodge at Loch Fitty and towards Loch Leven.
They gathered what Margaret, who knew Latin, called chalybeate salts from the pools fed by the mineral springs near to the hunting lodge. "These are the very salts that the healers purged Malcolm with when his life was ebbing. Warriors have been using these since a time before memory because they are made of iron, like swords,” said Margaret. "I will someday build a shrine here to protect this spring from corruption."
The lodge was meager but kept neat by an aging couple. It was not well used because hunters could reach here quickly from Dunfermline and so they only used it for shelter when caught out by sudden storms. It looked out over Loch Fitty, which was of sweet water, and clean except during the great migrations of birds. It was so peaceful that they decided to stay some days, and sent their escort back to the barracks at the palace.
The aging couple had once been wealthy tenant farmers near to Worcester, but had fled north in '67, and further north in '69, and finally to Scotland when, as part of his marriage vows to Margaret, Malcolm had declared all English exiles were welcome migrants to his kingdom. The couple were very discrete.
Margaret was the mother of future kings, and she formally invited him to be a father of future queens. They were very gentle with each other, and their soft caresses made it all the sweeter to subdue their carnal urgency. They lay together for hours before they first connected, and that was while they spooned to fall asleep. They woke three times in the night to re-connect, and only her need to pee in the morning broke the wondrous dreamlike trance that they shared.
By that time the small lodge was filled with the heavenly aroma of baking bread, and both of them wrapped linen around themselves to save the modesty of the wife, and went in search of the aroma.
That second day they spent much time lying in the pool beneath the mineral spring, just floating, and allowing the healing powers of the salts to poultice their entire bodies. Afterwards they swam in the loch to rinse away all of the salts and the poisons the salts would have drawn. For Raynar it was miraculous the difference in how he felt. He had lived with pain for weeks now, and if not the sharp pain of injury, then the dull ever present ache of sore organs and muscles and joints. Now he felt strange and realized that the strangeness was the absence of pain.
That night they each used more skill in their lovemaking, and rediscovered feelings for each other from long ago when they had spent a winter together hiding from the Norman army. They decided to stay another night at the lodge so they could repeat the aqua therapy of the day before, and also so they could keep this rediscovered intimacy growing.
It was now late spring and the glens were carpeted with wild flowers. Margaret wore them in flower chains in her hair and around her neck. Dressed in homespun country clothing, she felt every day more like a Queen of the May than a Queen of the Scots. Her husband was with his army, but his strategy was not to battle, but to show strength so as to force diplomacy. Her sister, her very capable sister, was running the palace and caring for her children. She shed her own worries like the petals of a dried flower, and in doing so she shed years, a decade, from her face.
He was enjoying this escape into springtime from his own worries, but there was one worry he could not shake. The worry of being caught out. "The keepers of this lodge, are you sure they will not speak of how we lived and loved together here?"
"This lodge has been used for trysts since the palace was first built. When I was too pregnant to share his bed, Malcolm would bring women here, and though I knew he was doing so, I never heard anything of who he was doing, or how intense it was. I am sure that Duncan, my step son, lost his virginity here a summer ago, but despite our intense curiosity to know which of my maidens took him, we have never heard."
Despite her soothing of his worries, he could not shake them. To be caught out would mean certain death for him. He would have to admit to taking Margaret by force, to keep her reputation intact, and then he would not defend himself against the sword thrust that Malcolm would be obliged to make.
"Still,” he whispered into her ear, "you are worth any risk. How I have longed for you through the years. How many nights have I dreamed of you. It was dreaming of you that brought me here, for all my nurses ever heard from my lips were Margaret and Scotland, and so that is where they sent me. To you."
* * * * *
The next morning they left for Loch Leven. Raynar's healing had leaped forward and he sat in the cart for half the distance and explained to the carter how to put bough springs under his hard seat to make it more comfortable. They skirted the steep slopes of Ben Artis and came to a dock where a single boatman plied his trade between the shore and a small low island on this end of the Loch.
Their escort again turned and headed back towards the palace at Dunfermline, while Margaret disappeared behind some thick bushes for privacy. She emerged moments later stuffing her homespun skirts into her pack and tying the rope belt of a monks habit. "Women are not allowed on the island. It is the innse of Saint Serb and holds a priory first built by the good saint after he had retired from being the Pope in Rome. Generations ago the Culdee's replaced the order begun by the saint, but even they use it as a place for the holiest of holy men to meditate and study."
"But your disguise could
not fool a child. They will not allow you to land."
"They are ascetics and gentlemen and would never be so rude as to call another a liar. They will know this habit is a lie, but they will accept it as the truth. Believe me in this. I have had many meetings with the prior to discuss what will happen to his order when the Romanized church replaces all others in Scotland."
"And will they? Replace them I mean. When I was here before, the churches and monastic orders were all spurs of the original church. The church of Constantinople."
"They will be. Malcolm has no choice. The Pope in Rome demands it, so the Conqueror demands it, and so our treaties with England demand it. My mission has always been to blend the old churches into the new. So long as there is progress, the Romanized Bishop that Rome has sent to Scotland is content to be patient. Holy men tend to be old. They eventually die. The new holy men will be Romanized. I ask no man to change his existing beliefs, just not to teach them."
"And Malcolm agrees to this?” asked Raynar who had waved the attention of the boatman who was now rowing towards them.
"Malcolm? Malcolm is like you, like all warriors. He does not offend any god, for that would be to tempt the fates, but the god he prays to before battle is Woden, and the angels he calls to when a man lays dead at his feet are the Valkyries."
"I like your plan. It is simple and does not offend. It must flow easily."
"Hah, you jest. Every day I must defend these and other Culdee from the bishop's ass-holy priests. They have no patience. They hate the old church far more than they hate the followers of Woden. They would look on you as a sinner desperate to convert to their way, but not yet seeing the light. They would look on the prior of this island as a blasphemer of the devil sent to thwart their true way. You they would force to kneel in prayer. He they would lock up and starve to death."
