Sacred and Profane

by Nina Merrill

  “Begin again?”

  “Trust me. I find it”—she struggled for a suitable word—“delicious that you found pleasure while generously giving me mine.” She shifted, separating her legs. “Come and lie here, and when your…lance…is ready once more, send it home.” She kissed him again, helping him settle his lean hips between her thighs.

  Tibald was no teenaged boy, to be firm again only minutes after an orgasm, but neither was he old. Years of self-imposed chastity left him eager for sensation, and by the time he had kissed and caressed her into yet another small climax, he was ready. She reached between them to guide him into her wet-silk softness.

  Jennie watched his face as he entered her. Every inch of his slow passage seemed to blind him with pleasure, and she knew his early spending meant this time he would last and last.

  “Yes, there.” She clutched at his buttocks, pulling him tight against her. “Ah, God.” He felt so good inside her, his girth stretching her so he fit with the snugness of a sword inside a scabbard made only for it. She nearly came from the look on his face alone. When he’d entered her fully, he began to move with slow deliberation, staring down at her with a look of confusion on his face. She reached up to frame his face in her cupped palms. “Don’t think. Just feel.”

  “I know now why we are bidden to chastity.” His mouth dropped and he kissed her deep and searchingly, while his lower back flexed in his thrusts. “This is pleasure so profound it makes the profane sacred. Jeanne!”

  Minutes passed while Tibald fucked her slow and deep, his weight held from her on his straightened arms. He watched her breasts shudder with each thrust, his eyes half closed. When he still had not come, Jennie put a hand on each of his hipbones and held him away from her. He grunted and pushed her hard into the bed of hay.

  “Did you not say I was to teach you?” she teased, slithering away from him. He followed, with his penis groping blindly to sheathe itself again.

  “I did, but teach, not torment. Lie still, temptress—”

  “Wait. Like this.” She twisted away, laughing, and turned onto her belly so she could crouch on hands and knees. “Come into me again, my knight.”

  “What, like a dog in the street?”

  She laughed again. “Not a dog. Like a ram to his ewes, or a bull to his cows—”

  “Or a war-horse covering a mare.” Tibald lunged behind her, catching her around the hip with one arm and pulling her back against him. In only a single groping push he was inside her again, and this time she could feel that the new posture—illicit, to his way of thinking—excited him, for he hardened even more inside her. The position left a hand free, and it roamed her body, cupping her breasts, tugging and pulling at nipples, stroking sensitive places, and dwelling relentlessly upon her clitoris. He seemed to delight in her cries and trembling, in the flex and arch of her back against him. He pushed deep and deeper still, and at last, when she convulsed around him, her head tossing and her breath harsh in her passion, she felt his own climax in the stuttering pump of his hips and the painful grip of his hands.

  Sleep was sweet in the fragrant nest of hay, the wondrous, perfect sleep after love, cupped close in the bend of Tibald’s body. Jennie slept more deeply than she had since arriving in Paris. He awakened her much later, turning her on her back so he could kiss her breasts and throat before he urged her thighs apart. With a smile she wrapped her legs around his hips, earning his gasping grunt of delight, her wet opening welcoming and deep. While they panted and thrust, the rushlight guttered out at last, leaving them in the soft darkness, with only hands and lips to guide them both to pleasure, urgent, delicious and drowning.

  Jennie yawned as Tibald pushed open her chamber door. He ushered her inside, and the two of them went directly to the table where the wine flask waited. They drank deeply, turnabout, sharing the wine as intimately as they had shared their bodies. The first gray light of morning lightened the window and the room enough that Jennie could watch the strong muscles of his throat as he swallowed. It was a sight she would never tire of. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, meeting her gaze.

  “You should rest, Jeanne. Tonight I’ll come for you after compline. It will be long, hard travel for many hours. I won’t be able to spare you that.”

  “I will do as you ask.”

  He bent to kiss her, a kiss tasting of the harsh wine. Jennie’s pulse increased, even though she felt deliciously weary and worn between her thighs. Tibald broke the kiss to press his forehead against hers. Unbidden, an image of Napier came to her mind, as he had looked when Tibald’s belly had just been stitched. Tibald had said nothing of Napier joining them. She bit her lip. Must he leave his companion behind?

  “It’s almost dawn.” She whispered because it was right to whisper.

  “Napier will come soon to relieve me. But for him, I would join you on that bed, Jeanne.”

  “Again?” She couldn’t help her smile when he caught her around the waist and pulled her against him to leave her in no doubt of his wishes.

  “Aye. Again, and again, and yet again.”

  “It is a very narrow bed,” she pointed out.

  “Upon which we two would be one.”

  Heady words, such heady words. Jennie stroked his bearded cheek, knowing her heart was shining in her eyes. He pressed a kiss in her palm and was gone.

  Chapter 20

  Despite believing excitement would keep her awake, Jennie slept until afternoon warmed her room. After dinner the wait for the compline bells was interminable, but at long last she heard them ring from the chapel tower, the same as they had rung every night. No special activity showed the knights had been alerted to any danger. She wondered how many of them knew about Maillet’s treachery, or if the commandery’s leaders were keeping most of the knights in the dark.

  At last she heard Tibald’s familiar step on the stair, and Napier’s quiet greeting. She hastened to the door and flung it wide, only just stopping herself from rushing into Tibald’s arms. A sack dangled from his hand, and a glimpse of his expression before he guarded it reassured her he didn’t regret their fall from grace.

  “I’ll go ahead of you,” Napier said. His look was clear. He knew what they’d done, Jennie was certain. She wondered whether Tibald had told him, or whether he simply understood the unsubtle changes in their behavior.

  “Commander de Payraud has caused a hay wain to be placed in the stable. We’re to take it, a horse, and the wagon’s contents.”

  “I’ll choose a horse for you, then.” Napier took a torch and was gone.

  Suddenly shy, Jennie watched him vanish down the stairs, afraid to look at Tibald. There was no need for trepidation, however—he caught her by the hand and tugged her into her room, closing the door behind them. The devouring kiss that followed reassured her completely and took her last breath. She’d never been held so tightly, nor had her mouth so sweetly ravaged. Tibald only released her lips when she was gasping for breath and clinging to him so she wouldn’t fall. He buried his face in the bend of her neck and shoulder, where his ragged breathing filled her ears.

  “We cannot linger here, though it’s what I desire beyond all else.” Tibald’s hands bit at her waist and he shook her gently. “Napier will need assistance in his tasks.”

  The sack bumped the back of her legs and she twisted to look down at it. “What do you carry?”

  “Some of Boudin’s clothing. We will disguise you as a boy.”

  “You aren’t wearing your mantle and tabard. You go disguised as well?”

  “If what you’ve foretold comes to pass, it won’t be safe to be recognized as a member of the order.” He let her go completely. “Gather whatever you wish to carry.” With a chuckle, he glanced around the nearly bare room. “Though it will doubtless be little.”

  Jennie bundled the two blankets from the bed and collected the wine flask. Her gaze slid to the pillow, beneath which lay the page of vellum and the quill stolen from Payraud’s study. She decided she didn’t need it�
��after days of fruitless struggles with the letters encoded there, they were graven upon the inside of her eyelids. She thought briefly of burning both at the fire, but that would mean revealing her crime, however minor, to Tibald. She turned with a bitten-lipped smile. “I’m ready.”

  “Not quite.” He swung her mantle around her and pulled up the hood, sealing the motion with two light kisses. “Now you are ready.”

  Jennie looked around the room for the last time. This was the adventure of a lifetime, embarking on a flight for their lives with the man she loved. She was glad to leave the small, stony cell, and yet terrified at the same time. Tibald watched her, then held out his hand, palm up, just as he had the night before, and with a fluttering heart, Jennie took it.

  In the stable, Napier spoke softly to a tethered horse while he stroked dirt and mud into its glossy coat to disguise it as well. Jennie was no connoisseur of horseflesh, but even she saw the hopelessness of trying to make the magnificent animal into something resembling a carthorse. Tibald pushed the sack of clothing into her hands and gestured her into an empty stall where there was relative privacy, while he assisted Napier.

  Jennie emerged from the stall wearing Boudin’s trousers tucked into the soft tops of her boots, and the rough woolen shirt belted with a length of rope. It felt good to be back in trousers instead of the too-long dress, and her movements were freer because of it. As she came into the glow of the torch, Napier was shaking his head.

  “She will never pass as a youth. Look at her, Tibald.”

  “We’ll cut her hair—”

  “My hair!” Jennie put her hand to her braid. Somehow she’d thought it could be stuffed inside a cap or helmet. Cut the chestnut strands that Tibald had buried his hands and face in as he made love to her only a day ago? The cloud of hair he had so gloried in?

  “Not her hair. Certainly we’ll cut that. It’s her teats we must conceal. Look at them, bounding like coneys in the grass.”

  Jennie looked down to where her breasts thrust out the shirt, and her nipples, erect from the irritation of the fabric. She crossed her arms over them. “They are what they are.” She scowled.

  “I will bind them.” Tibald reached for the old dress where she’d flung it over the stall divider. Two nicks with his dagger and the fabric tore in a long strip. He approached her with the cloth in his hands and tugged loose her rope belt.

  “For heaven’s sake, let me do it. You’ll tear something.”

  “You cannot bind yourself tightly enough alone.” He skinned the shirt over her head as if she were a toddler, and with a gasp she turned to conceal herself from Napier’s view. Tibald gave a soft chuckle and wrapped her chest tightly, tying the cloth in a flat knot between her shoulder blades.

  “I can’t breathe.”

  Napier snorted. “You have breath enough to speak. You cannot be discovered a woman—you’ll draw too much attention on the road and endanger my companion.”

  Tibald settled the shirt over her head, and while she struggled to put her arms through the sleeves, Napier grasped her braid in one hand. She heard his blade slitting through every strand, it seemed, then her head bobbed free. Light—too light. The familiar weight of her hair was gone, and she spun to face the knights, groping at the back of her head for what was no longer there. “Butcher!” she hissed at Napier, who merely laughed at her and sheathed his dagger.

  “Now you look a suitable squire for Tibald.” He tossed the unraveling braid to Tibald, who caught it one-handed and stared down at it, disconcerted. “It will grow back, so why are the two of you behaving like babes with a lost toy? Tibald, help me get the chest in the wagon and the horse harnessed. Your squire here can shift some of the hay from the loft.”

  Jennie, still blinking in shock, opened her mouth to argue before closing it again. It’s necessary, all of it. Except maybe Napier’s hatefulness, but he doesn’t seem to be able to help that. She ascended the ladder into the loft, gazing around her in the dimness. Aside from the cask still sitting plumply near the loft’s edge, nothing remained of the bed of love she and Tibald had shared. With a flush she remembered their passion, especially being mounted from behind, pleasured by his hands, mouth and hard, passion-silked cock. Her body began to throb at the thought, so she turned to the hay to distract herself. A wooden pitchfork stood at the side of the pile. With a will she bent to transferring hay over the edge of the loft into the wain standing beneath.

  Maillet came from nowhere as Tibald and Napier were settling the box in the wain and covering it with the hay. It seemed to Jennie the shadows in the stable, outside the ring of torchlight, exhaled him from the stall below.

  “Warden de Bergère. And Napier, your eternal shadow. What task has Payraud set you this fine evening?”

  From her vantage point in the loft above, Jennie saw both knights straighten in the back of the wagon. In front, the war-horse they had hitched to the wagon backed its ears, champing its bit and shifting restlessly.

  “Good eve, Maillet.” Napier gave a long stretch that fooled no one, not even Jennie. In the torchlight she saw Maillet’s hand drift to his sword hilt. He took a wider stance. She faded back into the shadows of the loft, intending to hide, but Maillet was not the king’s man for nothing it seemed. His eyes flicked up to her, and she fought the urge to touch her head where the missing braid had left her neck feeling coldly exposed. At his gaze, she felt the hairs on her arms and nape prickle beyond wariness into outright fear.

  “A new apprentice?” Maillet asked silkily, looking at Tibald.

  “Naught but a new stable hand.” Tibald dropped from the bed of the wagon, dusting his hands on his breeches. “I thought you locked away.”

  Maillet shrugged. “No longer, as you see. Where’s your warden’s insignia? And your tabard?”

  Napier dropped from the wagon as well, with that deceptively indolent grace Jennie had come to expect. He might look like a wand-slim youth, but the guise hid a core of deeply muscled steel. Jennie couldn’t see his dagger, and she knew his sword leaned against a post nearly twenty feet away. Tibald’s sword had already been stowed in the front of the wain near the driver’s seat.

  Tibald shrugged, with an easy smile. “’Tis dusty work, and I’ve no wish to soil my tabard.”

  “Yet your companion is not so fastidious.”

  Nor is he disguised for clandestine traveling. Jennie froze, a large bundle of hay in her hands. Maillet was catching on too quickly, and she suspected he’d confirmed the bulk of his suspicions the day he struck down Boudin and came for her in the tower.

  Tibald shrugged again. “What care I if Alain fouls his whites? He will do his own wash.”

  “Or, perhaps, the maid in yon loft will do it for him.” With that single word Maillet made it clear he knew who Jennie was, bound breasts and cropped hair notwithstanding.

  Now, subtly, the stances of both knights shifted. Jennie couldn’t have said how, but in the lines of their bodies she read a new alertness, a menace, that she had seen only once before in Napier and never in Tibald.

  Napier took an aggressive step forward. “What do you here, Maillet? Begone. We’ll have no truck with the rogue who struck down our brother Boudin.”

  Jennie moved to the loft’s ladder, still clutching the hay on a reflex. An impulse of dread urged her to be near her two protectors.

  “I? Strike Boudin?” Maillet put a disbelieving hand to his heart.

  Napier and Tibald exchanged a single look that made Jennie gasp and put a foot on the ladder.

  “Attend to your duties, knave!” bellowed Tibald, sparing her a flicker of a glance. “I set you a task. Now finish it!”

  Jennie found herself stammering as she struggled to stay in character. “Sir—I—”

  Now Tibald did turn to look at her, and as he turned, Maillet drew his sword. It was not the sleek ballet move of Napier, but it was effective. All eyes were upon him and the blade, glinting ruddy in the torchlight.

  “Warden, I charge you by your sacred oath to
speak the truth. What is secreted in that chest, and where are you taking it?”

  Tibald said nothing, staring at Maillet. The silence went on so long that Jennie heard the sputter of the torch as the loudest sound in the stable. Even the horses seemed cowed by the tension.

  “You and Payraud have hidden this woman for many days, and I will know why. By the will of the king, I order you to tell me.”

  “We bow to no man save the pope.” Tibald’s tone brooked no dissent.

  “You will bow to the king or forfeit your lives.”

  Napier laughed outright and Jennie saw Maillet’s look shift from slyness to fury.

  “You forget that we’ve drilled with you many a time. You won’t succeed in turning us from our task. Have a care for your skin, Maillet.”

  Maillet laughed in disbelief. “Do you threaten me?”

  Napier showed his empty hands. “With what weapon? I but tell you what you already know.”

  Maillet lifted his sword and pointed it at Tibald. “Warden de Bergère, I will charge you with treason if you do not reveal that maid”—the sword gestured toward the loft—“for that is no boy—and what she knows. She is a spy.”

  Chapter 21

  “No.” Tibald’s refusal was bald and absolute, and as Maillet’s expression grew dark, he continued, “I am the Warden here, as you say, and in Payraud’s absence, master of this commandery. I urge you to leave this place and trouble us no more. We do our commander’s bidding, not yours.” He looked up at the loft as he spoke, meeting Jennie’s frightened gaze. “This youth is of no import. The truth is that the king seeks to destroy our order. You’re the spy here, Maillet, and well you know it, as do we. Alain, since he chooses not to depart, bind him.”

  With Napier’s first step, Maillet spun into action. He lunged with his sword at Tibald, a feint intended to mislead, for as Tibald dodged, Maillet turned again and managed to nick Napier’s forearm when he tried to duck under Maillet’s guard. Jennie heard Napier hiss as he stumbled backward and was startled by her own furious reaction. How dared Maillet injure yet another of the men she had come to think of as hers? With a dreadful screech, she flung down the armload of hay she had been holding.