Raingarde doesn’t,’ I say.
‘Aye, they two are different alright. Like as can be to look at, except for Almodis’ scars, but different as can be in temper.’
‘What scars?’ I ask. I’ve bathed my Lady often enough in her padded tub and I’ve seen no scars on that perfect body. Piers reddens and I wonder if he has been peeking somewhere he shouldn’t.
‘On her left hand,’ he says. ‘Three small scars between her knuckles.’
I’ve never noticed them myself and wonder why he has.
‘All that time she spent as a hostage at the Aquitaine Court has gone right to her head and she thinks she is the very Queen of the Franks, the very Queen of Charlemagne himself. I never saw such self-assurance in a young woman in my life,’ I say to him, but as I say it, I realise that I’m starting to feel just a bit impressed with her. The count has still made no move to acknowledge Piers as his bastard and he projects his bitterness at this onto my mistress . ‘She is more like a man than a woman with all her reading, hunting, talking politics and striding around in boots with her brothers.’
‘Aye,’ says Piers, his hand now roaming on my knee and pushing up my skirts. ‘She is that. Mannish.’
The sensation of his hand on the soft inside of my bare thigh, above my hose, is glorious. I try to squeeze my legs together and squash his hand away but that only seems to increase the pleasure for both of us. Instead of removing his hand I am wriggling against it and feeling hot waves of desire. I pull myself away from his hand, sitting up against a sharp rock behind us. I should leave now.
‘She will have to mend her ways when she is a wife,’ I say, a little breathlessly. ‘She will have to be obedient and submissive, then.’
‘Yes, but I doubt that Hugh is the man to tame Almodis and put her right,’ says Piers, his mouth on my neck and ear and his hand undoing my other shoulder brooch. My gown slides down exposing both my breasts to the cold night air.
‘You think him weak?’ I gasp in a last vain attempt to distract him and stem the desire coursing through me, but he does not answer and I can say no more as he pulls me down on the ground, pulls up my skirts and mounts me and I am moaning now in pleasure.
It is full dark when I walk home. He has waited behind for a while so that we should not be seen returning together. I feel the dampness and soreness from him between my legs. I worry that I might be with child, but then Piers will marry me and I will have myself a fine husband with noble blood. I look doubtfully at the cheap tin bangle on my arm. I take it off and put it in my pocket.
8
Hugh the Fair
For our feast before I leave home for my marriage, I am seated next to Hugh and sharing his trencher. He helps me politely to food. My father and then my brother are seated to Hugh’s right. My other brother is away from home, training at the Court of Périgord. My mother is sitting on my other side. Raingarde has been veiled and banished to the children’s table lower down the hall, out of sight. The servants have cleared away the first courses of the meal and now they are parading in with the roasted hare and lamb.
‘Well, here you are my child, the Peaceweaver,’ says father, looking with satisfaction at the bowls of pink and black sauce in front of him. ‘As you know, Lord Hugh, there have been many years of fighting between our three families: Aquitaine, La Marche and Lusignan. First one of us encroached on another’s territory or took another’s castle or killed a kinsman and then there were the needful revenges. Those arguments went on for two generations, back and forth, but now this joining of you and my daughter will put an end to it.’
I have grown familiar with my father’s gesture of leaning back to savour his wine, and his stories of old times. It is expected at a wedding feast, to tell something of the stories of our kin.
‘Your ancestors, Lord Hugh, and mine, were bodyguards to
‘Aye, they two are different alright. Like as can be to look at, except for Almodis’ scars, but different as can be in temper.’
‘What scars?’ I ask. I’ve bathed my Lady often enough in her padded tub and I’ve seen no scars on that perfect body. Piers reddens and I wonder if he has been peeking somewhere he shouldn’t.
‘On her left hand,’ he says. ‘Three small scars between her knuckles.’
I’ve never noticed them myself and wonder why he has.
‘All that time she spent as a hostage at the Aquitaine Court has gone right to her head and she thinks she is the very Queen of the Franks, the very Queen of Charlemagne himself. I never saw such self-assurance in a young woman in my life,’ I say to him, but as I say it, I realise that I’m starting to feel just a bit impressed with her. The count has still made no move to acknowledge Piers as his bastard and he projects his bitterness at this onto my mistress . ‘She is more like a man than a woman with all her reading, hunting, talking politics and striding around in boots with her brothers.’
‘Aye,’ says Piers, his hand now roaming on my knee and pushing up my skirts. ‘She is that. Mannish.’
The sensation of his hand on the soft inside of my bare thigh, above my hose, is glorious. I try to squeeze my legs together and squash his hand away but that only seems to increase the pleasure for both of us. Instead of removing his hand I am wriggling against it and feeling hot waves of desire. I pull myself away from his hand, sitting up against a sharp rock behind us. I should leave now.
‘She will have to mend her ways when she is a wife,’ I say, a little breathlessly. ‘She will have to be obedient and submissive, then.’
‘Yes, but I doubt that Hugh is the man to tame Almodis and put her right,’ says Piers, his mouth on my neck and ear and his hand undoing my other shoulder brooch. My gown slides down exposing both my breasts to the cold night air.
‘You think him weak?’ I gasp in a last vain attempt to distract him and stem the desire coursing through me, but he does not answer and I can say no more as he pulls me down on the ground, pulls up my skirts and mounts me and I am moaning now in pleasure.
It is full dark when I walk home. He has waited behind for a while so that we should not be seen returning together. I feel the dampness and soreness from him between my legs. I worry that I might be with child, but then Piers will marry me and I will have myself a fine husband with noble blood. I look doubtfully at the cheap tin bangle on my arm. I take it off and put it in my pocket.
8
Hugh the Fair
For our feast before I leave home for my marriage, I am seated next to Hugh and sharing his trencher. He helps me politely to food. My father and then my brother are seated to Hugh’s right. My other brother is away from home, training at the Court of Périgord. My mother is sitting on my other side. Raingarde has been veiled and banished to the children’s table lower down the hall, out of sight. The servants have cleared away the first courses of the meal and now they are parading in with the roasted hare and lamb.
‘Well, here you are my child, the Peaceweaver,’ says father, looking with satisfaction at the bowls of pink and black sauce in front of him. ‘As you know, Lord Hugh, there have been many years of fighting between our three families: Aquitaine, La Marche and Lusignan. First one of us encroached on another’s territory or took another’s castle or killed a kinsman and then there were the needful revenges. Those arguments went on for two generations, back and forth, but now this joining of you and my daughter will put an end to it.’
I have grown familiar with my father’s gesture of leaning back to savour his wine, and his stories of old times. It is expected at a wedding feast, to tell something of the stories of our kin.
‘Your ancestors, Lord Hugh, and mine, were bodyguards to
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