Chapter 7
Elain left the door open and crossed the dim interior of the chapel. “Palahmed. What’s happened?”
She’d always thought him one of the most striking men she’d known, with hair so black it shone blue sometimes, and thick brows that crowned the proud angles of his nose and jaw. The last time she’d seen him—two years or three?—he’d been his ever-hale self. The same tall, strong sell-sword she’d known since she was fourteen.
He was striking now, but for all the wrong reasons. The man lay on a filthy pallet, beneath a fairly rotting nest of blankets. His long hair looked as if squirrels were preparing it for a winter nest, rivaled only by the disaster of his beard. His skin, usually a golden brown even after long months of rain and snow, looked sallow. Good gods, was he dying?
“Is it really you, Lancea?”
His dark eyes shone at her so she had to brace herself to ask, “Are you ill?”
“No.”
Another thought clutched her heart: his brother. “Is Safir all right?”
“He’s fine. Or was, last I heard.”
“Which was?”
Palahmed waved a hand and squinted. “Last winter?”
“Then what’s got you so…” She tried to find a tactful way to describe his current condition. “Low?”
“The fair Isolde.”
She stared at him. Surveyed his person and the wreck of the chapel. “You’ve reduced yourself to this… over a woman?”
“Isolde isn’t just any woman,” he rasped dreamily.
And just like that, it was as if she’d seen him yesterday. He was a mercenary of a level most lords couldn’t afford to hire, fierce of mind and lethal with a blade. Powerful, agile, and three steps ahead.
He was also an utter fool when it came to his heart.
“Idiot.”
“That I am. For Isolde.”
“Gods, shut up.”
“You would be too.”
“I most certainly would not.” She tugged at the blankets. The fabric shredded under the pressure.
Palahmed didn’t seem to notice. “Have you never loved someone so keenly they could send you into despair with a flick of their finger?”
“That’s pathetic. Have some pride, man.”
“Pride lives in the heart, but mine’s broken.”
Elain groaned.
“Into a thousand—”
“Oh, shut it. Come.” She tried to get a grip on him under his arms. “Rise, we have to clean you up.”
“Don’t want to,” he mumbled, making himself heavy with limpness.
“Fine.” She let go and he dropped back onto the mattress, coughing at the foul puff of air that caused. “I’ll start without you.”
She began to sort through the items on the floor, making piles for the rubbish heap, the laundry, and the kitchen boys, who scrubbed the wooden plates. She was immensely relieved to find he’d used the clay waste pot in the corner of the chamber for its intended purpose. With any luck, washing his person wouldn’t be quite so unpleasant now.
While she worked, Palahmed began to sing, his voice breaking and slurring through a tune she hadn’t heard before.
“What’s that?”
He broke off. “What?”
“What you’re singing. I haven’t heard it.”
“It’s a song I wrote.”
“Ah.”
“About Isolde.”
“Of course.” She looked at the stack of plates. “How long have you been here?”
He kept on with his stupid song.
“Palahmed!”
“What?”
“When did you last see the sun?”
“Silly Lancea,” he said in a sibilant slur. “There’s no sun in this dreary land. Not like where I grew up.”
“Tell me about that place where you grew up.”
But he went back to singing.
“Or tell me about Isolde,” she grumbled.
“She’s the loveliest creature you’ve ever seen,” he said immediately.
“I’ve never seen her.”
“How unfortunate for you. She’s lovely.”
“You just said so.”
“Her beauty would blind you.”
“Would it deafen me too? Liberate me from your singing?”
“Ha-ha.” He hummed another line. “I can’t even think of anyone to compare her to. She’s… incomparable.”
“Clever.”
“The cleverest!” he exclaimed from the pallet. “She solved every riddle I threw at her! Uncommon,” he said, seemingly to himself.
“How did you meet her?”
“Sold her husband some goods.”
“I wager you did. Wait—her husband?” She threw a bowl on the kitchen pile. “You’re moaning over a married woman?”
He blew air through his lips in a wet spray of drunken disdain. “Political tie. Nothing of her spirit in it.”
“What do you know of her spirit?”
“It’s as lovely and generous and passionate as the rest of her.” He looked as if he might try to sit up, but gave in to the pull of the blankets halfway there. “And she has eyes like jewels. And her hair—so light you’d think it a sunbeam. Much fairer than that whelp of Uthyr’s he’s always on about.”
Elain smiled despite herself. “Hers is supposed to resemble moonlight, not a sunbeam.”
“No comparison.”
No, there wasn’t. She’d risen early and left Gwen sleeping, her body soft and warm so that Elain had been tempted to slip back under the blankets and ease up close, fill her hands with—
“Her breasts!” Palahmed exclaimed.
Elain flinched, convinced for a moment he’d read her mind.
“They’re magnificent, Lancea.”
Fucking Isolde. “My name is Elain.”
“Well, my good Elain, never in your life have you witnessed a pair of breasts such as Isolde’s.”
“How so?” she asked because he was going to tell her anyway.
“Tiny, pert little things, with nipples like flower buds.”
“I prefer them fuller, myself.”
She didn’t realize she’d said it until he shifted on the bed to look at her. “Do you now?”
Uh-oh.
He narrowed his eyes. “Hold.” He waggled a finger in the air. “Weren’t you off to our man Uthyr’s these past months? That was the word here.”
“I was.”
“And weren’t…” He screwed up his face in thought, then pointed that long finger at her. “Married! You were to be married!”
“I was to be, and I was.”
“You were?”
“I was.”
“To Bedwyr, yes? Bedwyr of the Fair Sinews?”
“That’s the most ridiculous moniker I’ve ever heard.”
He shrugged. “Seemed pretty fair last I saw him here.”
“He is fair. He’s lovely, in fact, a good man with a big heart.”
Palahmed did sit up now, fully, his wide mouth curling into a sly grin. “Someone’s not so detached as she pretends.”
“We’re friends. It was a good match. Do get up.”
He didn’t. “Then why are you here?”
“Came for a visit. We traveled with Bed’s shieldmate and his wife.”
“You’re his wife.”
Infuriating man. “Arthur’s wife, my sister-by-law.”
“Arthur—the Great Fiery Hope?”
“Have you composed a song to him too?” she asked, testy.
“Isn’t his hair like fire?”
“It’s red.”
“Poetry, Lancea. Let it serve you.”
“A shovel would serve me better just now.” She looked at him. “Come. I need you out. I have to ready this place for Bedwyr’s sister.”
Palahmed gripped his ragged blankets possessively. “What’s Bedwyr’s sister to do with anything?”
“Gwenhwyfar’s my sister-by-law now.”
“Good God, your life is a bard’s tale.”
“You’ve no idea,” she muttered.
“Gwenhwyfar… Gwenhwyfar…” He frowned at the empty air before him.
“What about her?”
He said her name a few more times, then shook his head. “No rhymes.”
“Please don’t write a song about—”
“Whenever!” he cried.
“That doesn’t rhyme.”
“Close enough. So you’re here with Gwenhwyfar—sister to your brave husband, wife of the up-and-coming young Arthur, and daughter of the Pen y Ddraig—and to make her feel welcome you want to put her up in this hovel?”
For a lover of words, he could have phrased that in a less incriminating manner. But, “Yes.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
Her patience snapped like a winter-dry twig. “Our husbands are off to patrol the border, and I promised Bedwyr I’d take care of her, but she’s currently in the brothel loft, which is unsuitable to an egregious degree, and she’s accustomed to better and yes, this place is only marginally better, but I can make it work. I promised, and she deserves so much more but I have to try…”
Palahmed was watching her, rapt.
“What?”
“You married,” he said slowly, “but not the sibling you wanted.”
She stilled.
“Always so aloof. So pragmatic. Yet someone has finally captured your heart.” His eyes shone. “I must know everything.”
A bargaining piece, at last. “Get your sorry arse off that bed, and I’ll tell you all about her.”
He stood so quickly he swayed, but with a steadying hand on the wall, he stayed on his feet. It was a start.
“Your clothes are rank. Strip, at once.”
He winked at her. “Flirt.”
She made for the door. “I’m going to fetch some water. You’d best be naked when I return.”
“And you’ll tell me about your Gwen.”
“And I’ll tell you about Gwen.”
“Your Gwen.”
She sighed. “My Gwen.”
He crowed and began to peel off his grimy shirt.
~ ~ ~
Gwen sat in the rat passage, waiting for a sliver of light.
That was the signal, Caron had said. When a whore finished with a guest, they would part the rear curtain of their stall to let the servants know they could enter.
Servant. Not a word—or position—she’d ever thought would apply to her. Caron had treated her thus, with brusque words and blunt commands. Gwen suspected that was her natural manner, though she wondered if the woman was painting it a bit harsher than usual to pay Gwen back for trying to deceive her.
She’d weathered her share of subtle and not-so-subtle abuse from her father’s women over the years. Not all of them—some had been decent, or at least too preoccupied pleasing Uthyr to give his girl child any thought. But some had taken advantage of moments when they were alone to get in their digs. In retrospect most had only been trying to cement the hierarchy they wanted to establish in the house. Uthyr was at the top, of course, and the clever ones immediately recognized that Bedwyr was second. A few had tried to position themselves above Bed, and while he’d never said anything about their efforts, Gwen’s father had seen their maneuvering and put a quick end to their tenure in his bed.
Observant as Uthyr was, he didn’t see the quieter ways in which his women usually set Gwen down. Over the years, they had remarked variously on her hair, her stubborn chin, her breasts when they were nonexistent, then her breasts again when they bloomed in her thirteenth year. They gave her the menial tasks, the especially grubby ones, like cleaning the hearth and making soap of the ashes. They made her fetch this and carry that. They made her launder the bedclothes they soiled with her father.
So she was used to labor and to the tasks that station-minded women thought beneath them.
Every last one of the women had resented the lessons Uthyr had insisted Gwen take part in for most of her life. She had been an excellent pupil, if she said so herself, and she’d enjoyed the envy her father’s women let slip whenever Uthyr patted his knee and asked Gwen what she had learned that day. She would perch there and delight him, basking in the pride shining back at her from his dark eyes.
Standing quietly against one wall of the rat passage, she knew she’d sacrificed some of her father’s pride over the past couple of months. She’d betrayed his trust, and he didn’t even know how much. Now that she’d written him, he might put together more of the truth.
But she couldn’t undo what she’d done and wouldn’t if she’d been able. She was here, with Elain, serving Caron for her bread and bed, and she would make the best of it.
Besides, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t learn something here too.
Up ahead, a slice of soft golden light bisected the passage. Stepping away from the wall, Gwen drew close and peeked through the gap.
There were two people in the stall, a woman and a man. Of the man, Gwen could see only his shins and raised knees, as he lay on the mattress. The woman sat astride him. She had long hair that shone in the lamplight—the same warm tones Arthur’s had, or Mistress Britte’s when she attended the story fire back home. Other than her long hair, the woman was naked, and she moved continuously, like tall grass in a breeze. The man said something too low to hear, and she chuckled. Then she wriggled her hips, grinding against him, and he groaned. She raised her hips off him, and then Gwen could see his cock standing straight up as it emerged from inside her. Gwen didn’t see the whole thing, as the whore then lowered herself onto it again.
It was a fact of life, fucking. Most grew up seeing their parents fuck, as they all slept in the same space. Gwen’s father had always had a separate bedchamber, though, so she’d never witnessed it to the extent that she could see what was happening, had only ever heard the sounds of it. Once in a while, she stumbled on a couple in the forest or behind the meeting hall, but those moments had always shot her through with panic. Probably because of her more sheltered childhood, but also they had laid in her belly a sense of dread—that one day she would have to do the same, that one of those men she’d seen thrusting hard, causing their woman to jolt and grunt, would be able to do so to her as his wife.
Arthur could have done—Uthyr had handed her to him along with the house, like so much furniture. Fortunately for her, Arthur had been as nervous as she had, and kind besides, and had done his thrusting above her, into his own fist.
Inside the chamber, the woman rocked, the dimples above her arse revealed by her swaying hair, her voice as she spoke to the man low and somewhat rough. His hands slid back to grip her hips, his fingers pressed into her skin as if it were kneaded dough not yet risen, and then they slid back farther to dig into her generous arse cheeks.
It looked as if it might hurt, but the woman only made a noise that sounded encouraging. He squeezed his hands, and then she was walking forward on her knees. His cock slipped out, bobbing in the air before coming to rest on his belly. The woman continued forward, urged by the man’s hands up his body, over belly and chest, until she knelt astride his head.
Gwen held her breath as the whore hovered there, head bowed so that her hair swept forward over her shoulders. She asked the man something and he growled, but in a way that made her laugh. Then she lowered herself onto his mouth.
The woman gave a breathy cry, and Gwen’s belly cramped. She pressed her fingers into the front of her skirt, watching and listening. Between the man’s hands and the woman’s own movements, she was being opened to him. Over and over his tongue flashed in the low light of the chamber as he lapped at her. The whore wriggled even more now than when she’d had his cock inside her, and her voice began to sound different, higher pitched.
Gwen pressed her knees together and felt the slickness on her thighs. It had happened before, sometimes at night when the sound of her father’s women came through the door in a certain way, and much more lately, when she’d watched Elain moving about her chores, or sat across from her telling her a story, or when she’d lain against Elain’s long, lean body at night on the way to this place. She ached to touch her, and her body echoed the craving, leaving Gwen feeling restless in a way she wasn’t used to. She studied the whore for a few more seconds, then lowered herself to her knees.
As the whore moved her hips, and the man’s tongue swiped through her, Gwen drew her fingers through her own slickness. She lined her movements up with the man’s lips and tongue, fluttering her fingertips, then rubbing, and soon, her thighs were trembling with the effort to keep her upright. She tried to mimic how the whore moved her body, but her gaze was pinned to the hands that clutched her arse and the mouth eating its fill. A thought came to her, and she closed her eyes. Letting her head fall forward, she imagined she was looking down at Elain lying under her, her own eyes closed as she licked Gwen.
Her body jerked under her fingers, and she had to swallow a startled gasp. Catching herself on her other hand, she leaned forward, willing her breath silent. Her flesh ticked against her fingers, slicker than ever. A sound from the stall drew her attention, and she looked up to find the woman undulating more rapidly now. The man’s knees rose and fell as his feet pushed at the bedding. The whore was grinding hard against his face, and then, with a sudden cry, her body grew rigid. The man’s hands gripped her as fiercely as ever, his bearded throat moving as if he were drinking from her.
The thought was as disconcerting as it was fascinating. What did the woman taste like? What did she herself taste like? Tentatively, Gwen withdrew her hand from under her skirts and licked at her fingertips.
Salt, and something earthier, like dried pears. The man in the stall seemed to be enjoying it. Would Elain? Or did women not do that to other women—was it something only men craved to taste?
Elain had been asleep when Gwen returned from her errand the night before, and gone when Gwen awoke this morning. Her questions were heaping up around her.
But they weren’t what she would share first when next she saw Elain.