by Cooper, R.
My Man Godric
By R. Cooper
My Man Godric
Copyright 2012 by R. Cooper
Published by R. Cooper at Smashwords
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Thank you for downloading this ebook. This books is the
copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for
commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage
your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can
discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
Table of Contents
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Epilogue-Honey Cake
About the author
For Jane Davitt
Although Bertie had lived this moment over and over in his mind during the past two long months and dreamed it to keep himself warm at night and to stay hopeful during the day, the moment itself was a blur of sick worry, dizzying weariness, and the one overriding thought that he must look a mess.
Not just a mess, but a wreck. The crazy disaster that he was known for being, even if he had never before in his life been so dirty, or so tired, or dressed so terribly. Not even as a child had his hair been so tangled and stiff with dirt, his fingernails broken and stained, his clothing rough. He had not even had the time to attend to the fit of his borrowed clothing and the sleeves still did not reach past his wrists, leaving his hands numb and red with cold.
Distantly, he was still somewhat upset about that last point though he was aware it was shallow and stupid to fret over the fit of clothing borrowed from kind people and worn for the sake of survival. But there was almost nothing in the world so lovely as fine, soft clothes made from cloth bright as a butterfly’s wing. At home he would have embroidered the detail of robes and breeches, and cut and sewn his attire himself to his height, and mad and useless though he was, no one could deny that he had looked beautiful enough to have his pick of lovers.
But rainbow-hued weaves of satin didn’t suit hiding in dark forests and wild mountain ranges anymore than thin linens suited the icy air that signaled winter’s approach.
He would have had to resort to borrowed clothing in any event, as his finest cloak, alas, was now in two pieces and draped over the shoulders of the Widow Flanders’ two small children, his second finest over the Widow herself. Noble though the cause, his skin itched and burned with every step where it had been rubbed raw by coarse material and it was one more reason aside from his vanity to lament the loss of his things.
His very first day in these clothes he had decided that he would see to better clothing for his own servants the moment the opportunity was available, and he reaffirmed that decision to himself now. His people should be dressed in material that was warm and thick and soft and fitted to them, so no children went cold and no one else was driven crazy by the rough scratch of this horrible brown wool.
Ahead of him was the largest tent in the camp, the door flap already partially opened and spilling orange light over Bertie and the people waiting behind him. With so many waiting for him to move, it was even more selfish and shallow and stupid, but he wasted another moment hoping there was a vast and soft feather bed on the other side of that door flap, along with water for a hot bath. He wanted those more than he wanted food though his stomach was making a nuisance of itself once again.
He patted his chest soothingly and then threw aside the thin cloak that had been loaned to him by one of the three stern soldiers that rode guard around his far too small band of survivors. He immediately shivered at the cold evening air, or perhaps at the thought of those left behind, though he couldn’t let himself dwell on that, not now. Beyond the doorway lay safety, rescue, and the love of his life. He knew that, but he stopped with his hand out, letting the warmth that radiated out from inside the tent reach his clumsy, half-frozen fingers. He shivered again. This truly was not how he’d meant things to go.
Godric’s captain, the blond-haired, perpetually unhappy man-at-arms at Bertie’s side paused too, quite obviously stopping himself from prodding Bertie forward, perhaps recalling Bertie’s rank just in time.
Bertie’s rank was a thing that Bertie had a feeling many forgot, either due to his dress or his careless manners, but Bertie had never much minded the slights. He was well aware that he had no talent for governance or war craft as his brother had. The opinions of others, of most others, had long since ceased to matter much to him.
Nonetheless, he opened his mouth to lick his regrettably cracked and dry lips. Wiping a hand over his face and feeling stubble at his jaw made him wince, as did the quick finger-comb of his short hair. Even with his reputation, knowing the world often thought him useless, the king’s illegitimate half-brother, the princeling with a love of needlework and feminine clothing, at this moment, he could not help but fret over his appearance and wish himself someone else, someone braver and more worthy.
Then he heard the children behind him suppress a tired complaint and an elderly steward shift against the branch that had served as his crutch, and he raised his chin and stopped his dithering. The captain next to him seemed to still and Bertie glanced at him, narrowing his eyes in a fair approximation of his brother’s manner.
His tone however, was all his own.
“You will see to my people, will you not, Captain?” he inquired sweetly, imploringly, and yet well aware that he would not be denied. He did not wait for the inevitable agreement. There was only one answer any man could give to Aethelbert of Clas Draigoch, and that was yes.
Unless of course that man was Godric of the South.
Bertie put a hand to his stomach to quell its excitement, though heat was rising in his cheeks and he was trembling like the last remaining leaves in the trees around them.
Godric.
He pushed inside the tent with sudden impatience, forgetting about both his fears and his impossible fantasies of collapsing into his beloved’s arm the moment he realized he would actually get to see Godric if he moved forward. Godric was here. Close and real and alive.
Also probably irritated with Bertie as usual. He would be polite, spare with his words, but distant.
Bertie stumbled at the thought, worn to the bone, but held up a hand to ward off attempts to help him so he could look past the council of knights gathered around a table. He ignored every startled look of recognition and surprised, hurried bow until he found his target, his treasure, the straightening figure at the other end of the room.
Sir Godric of the South. The hero of Bohdon. The Master of the Horse and Captain of the King’s Guard. Stable boy turned soldier turned knight, honored and feared even in the lands beyond the sea for his courage and wisdom, and, if rumor were true, the one man the king turned to for honesty aside from his foolish, bastard brother, and the one man the Green Men from the East were said to want dead more than any other.
He was, on his feet, about half a head shorter than most of the other men in the room and mere inches shorter than the Hereditary Count Vonridii, the lone woman present. He had untamed pale hair, rich with silver, which thinned slightly above the temples, and piercing eyes for all that their color was an unremarkable brown.
He wore plain, likely itchy, coarsely-made breeches, and a shirt with sleeves so short his forearms were bare, revealing soldier’s tattoos, the work of a tiny needle and ground up bark and hours of patience and pain. Chainmail glinted at his
neck.
Though Bertie could see no visible wounds, his heart pounded for one moment at the sight of the tarnished metal links. He had to blink away the vision of blood, of lives lost and blades buried in flesh, and held back his gasp with unappreciated effort. When he had, mostly, composed himself, he looked back up.
There were lines at the corner of Godric’s eyes, lines Bertie had not seen before, lines not there when Bertie had last leaned toward him to offer a painfully respectful farewell. Seeing them hurt in the way that Bertie was used to hurting around Godric, his chest sore as though it was bruised and his body shaking with helplessness. He wanted nothing so much as to run to Godric and hold him until he felt as strong as Godric looked, until those cracks at Godric’s eyes went away and never returned.
Instead he swallowed and silently burned with the effort to keep still as Godric looked him over; Bertie was a spoiled creature, it was true, but he would not like to force himself on Godric, again, simply because that was what he wanted. Or, at least not when he was a dirty wreck. He recalled himself and his scraps of dignity enough to nod a greeting as he could not seem to force out a sound.
“My lord,” Godric spoke in his low, quiet voice, as warm and solid as a hearthstone. “I am happy to find you alive and unharmed.” That was all, but Bertie reveled in it. He had often wondered if his ever-silent Godric had learned to make his words rare in a court that mocked his low birth. His origin was in his accent for all to hear, although no one in this tent seemed to find it worthy of scorn. Not one eyebrow in the room was raised.
With no one then to glare at on Godric’s behalf as there often was in Camlann, Bertie had no choice but to stare back at Godric. He did not mind. Godric might have been short, but he was thick with hard-earned muscle and his skin spoke of health and sunshine. Health. Bertie thanked the gods.
Bertie had been younger and sheltered behind Camlann’s walls the last time the invaders had come, but he had heard the stories of what they had done to anyone who had defied them, stories enough to give old soldiers pause and leave others trembling with remembered terror.
But for now, Godric lived. Inside Bertie was pure joy, white like the heat of weapons being forged. Godric was alive and in front of him and had not been captured or tortured or killed.
Thus, because Bertie was not only a fool but a fool in love, what finally emerged from his mouth was, “You grew the beard again” and a small tut of despair.
He could have bitten his tongue.
In truth, he did not mind the short beard on Godric’s face, though it was rare to see a nobleman unshaven. It was simply a long-standing, friendly jest between them, or so he’d thought, begun years ago with Godric riding alongside Bertie on the trail to the Keep while Bertie had pestered him with a thousand and one questions.
The others assembled in the room seemed shocked at the perceived rebuke. Godric, praise the Lady, merely scratched at his chin. It was his custom to forgo shaving when travelling, as they both knew. What was necessary to belong amongst courtiers was not so on the road, as he had once told Bertie, and then had reached out, letting his hand pass over Bertie’s skirts without touching them, making a point without saying another word.
Bertie’s skirts often confused others, but he did not wear them to startle others or for comfort while travelling. He wore his skirts because he pleased to. Just as it had pleased him to touch himself at the memory of Godric’s hand so close to him, and what Godric might have done if he had loved Bertie in return, if he would have lifted the layers of cloth to bare Bertie’s skin, if he would use his mouth on his cock, or just work him with one strong hand, if Godric would like the feel of soft skirts against his stomach and thighs as Bertie rode him. He had often wondered if Godric would speak more in bed, and what he would say if Bertie begged to fuck him.
He was imagining it when Godric cleared his throat to speak again, and Bertie could not help wetting his lips again in delight at the sound of his voice.
“If my beard offends you, my lord…” Godric started to say and Bertie took another step forward before remembering himself and halting. Despite the lingering cold his blood was suddenly pounding, heating his skin. He wrapped his arms about his body to keep his hands safely away from Godric. He felt his cheeks flush. He had not meant to mock Godric, yet once again he had publically embarrassed the man.
“No, no, it’s fine. I… we’re at war… don’t be…. You should know better than to mind me. I am hopelessly—” He did bite his tongue. Would he never learn?
“It will be gone in the morning,” Godric went on anyway, as he always did, so courteous it was cruel, “my lord.”
Bertie shut his mouth hard but the protesting moan slipped out regardless. He hadn’t meant that as an order. He would never speak so to Godric.
“Are you well, Lord Aethelbert?” someone else asked, and Bertie turned, barely sparing a glance for Baron Gywnn even if he was a cousin. The man wasn’t smirking at least, likely too taken aback by Bertie’s appearance. Bertie would admit his appearance was unusual.
It wasn’t fair. Clean and elegantly robed in silks embroidered by his own hand with the red dragon of his mother’s people, Bertie might have had a chance to catch Godric’s eye. He was tall, slender, with poplar-dark hair and skin of golden brown. Red flattered him. Skirts seemed to let him float as they wrapped and slid between his thighs. A tight bodice left his collarbone exposed, there to be kissed or nibbled at Godric’s will.
Of course, if Bertie had been going to ensnare Godric when within Camlann’s high walls, in a dress or even fine leggings, he would have done it by now; he’d certainly been bold enough in his attempts. A few twigs in his hair and a pair of scratchy breeches weren’t likely to make any difference.
Bertie saw their eyes on him and put on the court smile he hated though he was a bruised and saddle sore, though his feet hurt and his skin itched and the cold in his bones had not once faded, not once in the two months since he had stayed behind at the Keep and watched Godric ride away.
In that time he had gone without, lived in constant anxiety, felt blood on his hands, and not heard a single word of his brother or Godric. But he was Aethelbert of Clas Draigoch, so with chilled, shaking hands, he smoothed back his hair and straightened the thin but heavy golden torque at his throat. He should not have put it on or carried it with him from the Keep, but he’d thought he might need the gold if things grew desperate and had only put it on moments before in moment of foolish vanity.
It was a silly hope indeed that some shiny jewelry might do what his bold words and outstretched hands had not, and he sighed at both his dreams and his failures, then sighed again for the small flame of hope that someday, someday, he might at least return to the level of friendship he had once enjoyed with Godric before he had opened his mouth to declare his love for him for all the Court to hear.
He realized that the others around him were struggling to conceal their impatience with him while he had let his mind wander to better times, and then remembered that he had been asked a question.
“No. No I am not well,” he answered honestly, for that was more of his famous madness. Bertie might be ladylike and useless with a blade and strange even for a child of the Red Dragon, effete even for a courtier, but he was as honest as only the mad could be. It was how everyone thought of him and he couldn’t deny it. For that he scowled and turned away from their eyes, aware that they would not understand how recent events had touched him.
“The Keep has been razed, its fields set afire, its people killed or scattered,” he reported flatly, the wound still raw. The Keep was, had been, more his home than the capital city had ever been. Godric’s eyes bored into him, intent and dark, but Bertie had to finish. “Too… too few remain alive and in my care, and even then I could not bring them all, only the children and the injured, and I promised I would send aid through I knew when I made the vow that I did not even know of Aethir lived.”
There were raiders again in his mind’s eye and he shu
ddered. The raiders had been without horses, a small but ravenous force on foot, disrupting the peace of the valley and for what, vengeance for a war years behind them?
Bertie had never seen a green man with his own eyes though stories of their ferocity and ravenous forces had haunted many children in the dark of night. The Green Men had first come decades ago, arriving in their strange boats in small groups at first and then larger when they found the land to their liking. No one knew why they persisted in making their way down from the frozen lands in the High North across the Eastern Seas or why they chose war over trade. Their language remained a mystery and those about to be captured would often take their own lives on the battlefield.
He would admit, as many would, that he found them frightening. Despite the resistance from the tough fishermen along the coast of Gallia, the Green Men had gone down into the Gallian rivers toward their farmland until driven back after five long years of fighting. Then they had turned their attentions full force to taking the lolling hills and harsh mountains of Breta.
Breta had been formed from the conquer of many smaller kingdoms, but though differences between West, North, and South remained, none had hesitated to band together to repel the Green Men when they had struck the coastal villages and pressed inward. The earliest defenders had built the wall across the land bridge in the icy marsh to the northeast and left watch towers at the harbors for each king, including the great Aethered who had ruled over them all, and the future boy-king Aethir, to defend.
It had been in last of those wars when Godric had impressed both father and son and made a name for himself, earning the personal hatred of the different clans of the Green Men. It had also been those wars that must have brought the Green Man back to them after all this time, Bertie knew he was not the only one to think it, though some of the knights were obviously surprised by his news and the direction of this new attack. It was a needless but symbolic victory to sack the autumn resting place of the Bretan kings.
